How to Find a Facebook Profile from a Picture or Photo

Evan Gower February 7, 2020

Finding a Facebook profile of a person can be very challenging, even if you have a picture of them. In fact, you can’t look up a profile on Facebook using image search, but there is a workaround you can use. Also, you can rely on the trusted Google image search, which is possibly even better.

These two are your main two methods of finding a Facebook profile when you only have a picture to go on. Keep reading to find out detailed instructions on how to do so, and a deeper dive into this interesting topic.

The Easy Method

There are two main methods for finding people’s Facebook profiles based on their image. Of course, there are other methods that include third-party sites, but we don’t recommend using those. The first method we’re about to run through is arguably easier than the second one.

It’s much simpler and perhaps you’ve heard of it before. That’s right, we’re talking about the Google Image search, also called the reverse image search method. If you don’t know how to use it, don’t worry. Follow the laid out steps below:

Visit Google images in any browser.
Click on the Search by Image button (camera to the right of the search bar).
There are two ways of doing this. You can either paste an image URL (link) or upload an image from your computer. For those who are struggling, uploading an image from your computer should be fairly simple. To copy an image URL online, right-click it, and select Copy image address or location.
When you do one of those things (upload image or paste URL) click on Search by Image.
You’ll see a list of all results for the image you uploaded. Now you can add site:facebook.com to the search bar to limit the search to Facebook. Press enter to see if there are any results for the Facebook profile you want to find.

The Not So Easy Method

This method isn’t difficult per se, but it’s not as effective as the Google reverse image search. It’s limited because it will only get you results if the person has made their Facebook profile public for everyone to see.

If their profile is private, so are their pictures. Therefore, you won’t find anything. Not to sound pessimistic, that’s just how things are. In either case, follow the instructions to find Facebook profiles using pictures from Facebook:

Open a picture on Facebook in order to find the profile from which it originated
Look at the number after the https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid= line in the URL of the picture. In our example, this number is 1011100762386533.
This is the Facebook picture ID number. After we added the picture ID after the URL above, this is what we got https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10111007623865331. It turns out the picture we looked up belongs to the profile of none other than Mark Zuckerberg.

A Word of Advice to Our Readers

As you can see, these methods aren’t so shabby if you’re looking to find a Facebook profile based on a picture or photo you found on Facebook. Keep in mind that a little curiosity never harmed anyone and to be interested in a person when you see their picture is totally normal.

You might find the person pretty, attractive or charming, or you might even know them from somewhere. Still, we would advise against sending them messages on Facebook before they’re on your friends list.

It’s fine to try adding them, even if you don’t know them yet. However, sending too many messages to strangers is usually regarded as impolite. Girls especially don’t like that, trust us. You don’t want to be another unaccepted invitation on their list.

Sending far-fetched messages can only make things worse. Be more subtle if you want to get in touch with them, even if they’re an old forgotten childhood friend or something of the sort. Saying “Hi, do you remember me?” is totally fine though. It’s much better than an elaborate two-page message. People won’t even bother reading the entire wall of text if it’s from someone they consider to be a stranger.

Good Luck

Hopefully, the advice you read in this article helped you find the profile or profiles you were looking for on Facebook. Sorry about the lecture near the end, it just felt right to offer some reasonable advice we’ve gathered from first-hand experiences.

It would be really cool if we helped you get in touch with some long-forgotten friends on Facebook. If that’s the case, feel free to share your story in the comments section below.