Okay, so I was bored and figured I wanted to spend some time searching for real life examples of my stock images in use. I've become quite good at it and figured out some new ways to get better results. During the last couple of days I've been focusing on finding out which pizzerias throughout the world uses my illustration of a pizza chef because it has sold steadily since 2008: http://www.shutterstock.com/pic-27610309/stock-vector-illustration-of-an-italian-cartoon-chef-with-a-freshly-baked-pizza.html?src=5d014985bb2b2c50322513231c6e47ac-1-16

During the last couple of days I found at least 10-20 examples of this image on the front store of various pizzerias, on menu cards, book covers etc., and even as embroidery:



I'm not sure if you can apply these techniques on all photos or illustrations, but hopefully it will serve as an inspiration and you can develop your own techniques for your specific illustrations/photos. Anyways, I'm going to share all the steps I took in order to find this pizza guy in use with the help from Google and Bing:

Google Search By Image
https://www.google.dk/imghp?hl=da&tab=ii

1. Tip no. 1 - Upload your image directly into Google or drag it into the search field in order for it to find matches. This is the first thing you do. By default Google will find some keywords it thinks applies and use them in addition to the image you just uploaded. For instance, when I upload the pizza chef image it automatically fetched the keywords "pizza pronto" which I find rather strange - other examples might be "vector clipart pizza chef" which isn't of any help in regards to what I want to do. It doesn't help me in my search, so I replace these default keywords with various keywords I think will help me in - examples are "logo", "pizzeria", "pizza", "restaurant" or "take away". Each time with more or less the same results, however some new results appear every time I change the keywords. I've also had new results by translating some keywords into other languages, for instance the Italian "ristorante" instead of "restaurant".

2. By using the above method I found various examples of my image on websites of pizzerias around the world. These were the most interesting results. If they use my image on the website, do they use it in there printed material as well? Look for a "photo's" section on their website, go to their Facebook group if they have one and try to find all the photos that is available of their store / physical location. This has worked surprisingly well for me. You can also google the name of the store and browse photos, use Flickr, Bing etc.

3. When you think you're done and have browsed through all results on Google, go to Illustrator / Photoshop and reverse the photo. Some people might have preferred a reversed or upside down version of your illustration / photo, and this leads to entirely new results on Google's Search By Image.

4. Some restaurants used my image on their website but didn't have any photos of their physical location neither on Facebook or Google. Try using Google Street View and tune in on their address, you might be lucky the Google car snapped an image of their store front. I found two more pizzerias using my image this way.

5. If you're looking for a vector illustration in use, lose some details and upload the image to Google Search By Image again. I tried removing the steam from the pizza, along with the circular frame surrounding the chef. This lead to yet another bunch of new results with modified versions of my illustration.

6. Use Bing. I'm not very familiar with Bing, but it's a great addition to Google Image Search. First off, I started by finding one of my illustrations at a stock agency. I then clicked "more sizes of this image" (not "similar images", it doesn't work as well for some reason) and surprisingly it also found modified versions of my image with text, banners etc. - I had already seen most of the results on Google, but also new ones appeared that Google apparently hadn't crawled. This lead me to new findings as well

General tips:
These techniques are better performed with your top 10 (or maybe 5) selling images, otherwise it might be a waste of time. Also use images that have sold for several years and not something you uploaded half a year ago - it won't work in most cases.

If you do manage to find your images in use by some company, please try not to contact them unless they're using your image illegally in some way. They might be confused because most likely another designer has been involved with the development of the sign/whatever, and they have no clue about "microstock" or "you" being the originator of the illustration/photo. It will be all weird to them. I've personally come across LOTS and lots of illegal uses and plagiarism during my little journey (and even signs printed with watermark), but this stuff just doesn't upset me anymore as it used to. It's entirely out of my control, and I'm still making money from honest customers, so whatever.


If you want to check out some of my findings with the above techniques (I only posted the most interesting ones imo), you can check out my gallery on Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.4448591565149.2165114.1000247457&type=3

And feel free to post your own techniques and findings, that would be interesting

Happy New Year to you all

Thomas

Very interesting and nice to see all the image uses. But for me, all this would be way too much work. A few times i have used google images for Pics of friends but otherwise i find it to be too much work.

Brilliant Thomas! Thanks so much. One quick note that I could add....the technique works with Chrome but not with older versions (at least not for me).....