How to read the evidence.
An image match tells you where a copy appears. A credit helps connect it to a creator. A useful report keeps those two findings separate.
On this page
An example
- A matching image
The artwork on a public post is compared with your image. This supports the image match.
- An artist credit
The caption links to an artist’s account. This adds a credit trail; the posting account may be a reposter.
- A creator lead
Matching artwork and credit evidence are considered together. Conflicting credits remain visible in the report.
What the labels mean
- Image match
- An accessible source image was compared with your image. A preview match is labelled separately.
- Supported
- Matching artwork and explicit credit or authorship evidence support the creator lead.
- Likely
- There is useful supporting evidence, but the creator attribution remains uncertain.
- Lead only
- A possible creator or source was found without enough evidence to support a stronger attribution.
- Earliest discovered
- The oldest dated source in this search. An older original may be missing or inaccessible.
1. Find public sources
Start with a still image or supported public post or image URL. A post link must expose an accessible image before it can be searched. Artist and creator searches gather matching pages, credits, and public profiles in a single source trail.
Requests and follow-up checks are bounded. Progress describes the work happening now. Inaccessible sources remain unavailable; SourceTrace does not bypass platform restrictions.
2. Inspect the credit trail
A small set of accessible pages is checked for captions, creator credits, posting accounts, public profile images, publication dates, and links to earlier or original posts. Explicit credits such as “art by” are treated differently from ordinary mentions.
A posting account is not automatically the artist. Reposts and artwork indexes can still be useful when they preserve a credit or link to an original source. Supported public profile lookups are best-effort; a platform logo is not used as an artist photo.
3. Compare accessible images
Artist, creator, and image searches can compare accessible images using pixels, visual structure, and perceptual fingerprints. The number of comparisons is bounded by the search time available. A source that was not independently compared stays unverified, even if a search result describes it as an exact match.
Verification supports an image match, not authorship. Heavy edits, inaccessible originals, screenshot borders, and featureless images can limit comparison.
4. Assess the creator
The returned creator answer is the main attribution lead. Public profile details help populate the name, handle, photo, and social links; they do not establish authorship. A result stays a lead rather than proof, and an unknown creator answer is not replaced with a reposter or a page title.
Similar handles on different platforms are not enough to join accounts. Public links and supporting profile evidence are needed. Confidence describes the evidence available for this search, not legal ownership.
5. Read dates carefully
Publication dates and original-source links help trace the image between posts. The earliest discovered source is not necessarily the first publication: an older post may be deleted, private, or not indexed. Dates alone do not establish authorship.
Limits and feedback
Completed reports and resized images are saved at unlisted public links that can be reopened or shared. Saved reports are snapshots and do not update in the background. There are no accounts or private search histories. Public source access and the shared search allowance limit coverage. If a result could not be saved, keep its useful source links before leaving.
If you find stronger public evidence, send it through the feedback page. Treat the report as an attribution aid and review the source yourself before passing the credit on.