🔎 Reverse Image Search
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The advert found you on social media: a beautifully photographed coat, pair of shoes or gadget at half the usual price, from a shop you have never heard of. The website looks professional — and that means nothing, because a convincing storefront can be assembled in an afternoon. Fake shops are among the most common ways online shoppers lose money, but they share a weak point they cannot fix: their photographs.
This guide starts with the photo test — reverse searching the shop’s product images to see where they really came from — then works through the supporting checks on the business itself, and finishes with what to do if you have already paid. It concerns standalone shops with their own websites; buying from a seller on a platform is a different risk, covered in our guide to Facebook Marketplace scams.
The photo test, step by step
A genuine retailer photographs its own stock or licenses images from the brand it sells. A fake shop does neither: it lifts product photos wholesale from the real brand’s website, marketplace listings, other retailers or social media. Those copies are exactly what reverse image search is built to find. Run the test like this:
- Open the product page for the item you want and save its main photograph — the largest version, not a thumbnail.
- Upload it to our free reverse image search tool, which checks one picture across six engines at once.
- Compare the top results with the shop’s page: same photograph, same background, same model?
- Repeat with a second and third product from different categories.
- Note where the matches live — the brand’s own store, a major retailer, a marketplace — and compare the prices there.
A worked example: a “designer” coat listed at a fraction of its usual price, whose main photograph turns up, pixel for pixel, on the brand’s official store and in a marketplace listing from another seller. The shop has not photographed a coat; it has copied a catalogue. If the item is clothing, the methods in our guide to reverse image search for clothes help you search by garment and detail, and our walkthrough on how to check if a photo is stolen covers reading matches and comparing crops.
What the results tell you
- Matches on established retailers or the brand’s own site. The classic signature: the shop has copied its catalogue from the businesses it pretends to undercut — sometimes including their lifestyle shots, size charts and even the original retailer’s branding left faintly visible.
- The same set on several unknown “shops” at once. Fake stores are rarely built one at a time; identical products and word-for-word descriptions across multiple obscure sites indicate a network, not a coincidence.
- No matches anywhere. Odd for common branded goods, typically sold and photographed for years. Possible with genuinely handmade items — but treat it as an unanswered question, not a pass.
- Inconsistent image quality. Crisp professional shots beside blurry crops and stretched banners, because the pictures were harvested from sources of different sizes. A real shop’s imagery is dull in its consistency.
One clean result does not clear a shop — a scammer can photograph a single sample item as bait. But stolen catalogue photos plus any warning sign below is a combination to walk away from. The search has a bonus, too: it usually surfaces the genuine listing, so the technique that exposes the fake also lets you find the item by its image at a retailer you can verify.
Check the business behind the website
- Domain age. Fake shops are disposable. A site claiming years of trading on a domain registered a few weeks ago is lying about the easiest thing to check: a free whois lookup (Nominet runs the one for .uk domains) shows any domain’s creation date.
- Contact details. Look for a real postal address, a working phone number and an email address on the shop’s own domain. Only a web form — or an address that turns out, when searched, to be a random house or another company’s office — is a serious warning.
- Company registration. A UK shop should name the company behind it; check the name free of charge on Companies House. No company named anywhere, or one that does not exist, ends the enquiry.
- The small print. Returns policy, delivery times and terms should exist and cohere. Copied policies with another store’s name left in, contradictory delivery promises, or English that reads machine-translated in a hurry are all telling.
Citizens Advice publishes guidance on checking traders and your rights when shopping online — worth reading before a first purchase from any unfamiliar seller.
Prices, payments and reviews
Prices. Discounts happen; arithmetic that cannot work is different. Current branded goods at a third of every other retailer’s price usually means counterfeits, no intention of sending anything, or a page built to harvest card details. Ask where the margin could possibly come from.
Payments. Paying by card gives you protection and a route back; a shop pushing bank transfer, payment to a personal name, gift cards or crypto is choosing methods from which money typically cannot be recovered — legitimate businesses do not need that protection from their customers.
Reviews. Read them as a pattern, not an average: all five stars and vague (“great product, fast delivery”); a sudden cluster; reviews nowhere except the shop’s own site; praise for products it does not sell, left over from a copied template. Check independent review platforms, and search the shop’s name together with “scam”.
What a real shop looks like by contrast
Genuine small shops are imperfect in reassuring ways. Their photography is consistent rather than stolen. The business has a findable history: a registered company, a real address, reviews and mentions spread over years rather than weeks, prices that make sense against competitors. It answers the phone, or replies to email with specifics. It accepts cards, promises delivery times it can keep, and its returns policy names the business correctly. A real business leaves a trail it could not fake cheaply; a fake shop is all surface — a polished storefront with nothing behind it that survives three checks.
Already paid? Act quickly
- Contact your bank or card provider first. For credit card purchases over £100, Section 75 may make the card provider jointly liable; on any card, ask about a chargeback for goods not received or not as described. Act promptly — card schemes typically set a deadline, commonly around 120 days from the transaction.
- Report the fraud. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland, report to Action Fraud, the national reporting centre for fraud and cyber crime (or by phone on 0300 123 2040); in Scotland, report to Police Scotland.
- Save everything. Order confirmation, emails, and screenshots of the product pages and the advert that led you there, with dates — before the site vanishes and takes the evidence with it.
- Watch the card you used. Some fake shops harvest card details for later use. If you believe the site was harvesting, tell your bank and consider a replacement card.
And keep the habit that would have caught it: the photo test takes under five minutes and costs nothing. Run it before the next too-good price, not after.
FAQs
A shop’s photos checked out — does that mean it is safe?
Not by itself. A scammer can photograph one genuine sample, and some fake shops mix their own shots with stolen ones. Treat the photo test as the first filter; the shop should pass the business, price and payment checks before it earns your card number.
How do I reverse search a product photo from my phone?
Open the product page, long-press the main image and save it (or screenshot it and crop to the product). Then upload it to a reverse image search tool. The largest, cleanest version gives the engines the best chance of finding the original listing.
The shop has glowing reviews on its own website. Can I trust them?
No — reviews on a shop’s own pages are entirely under its control and cost nothing to invent. Look instead at independent review platforms, and judge the pattern: reviews spread over years, naming specific products and delivery experiences, are far harder to fake than a page of recent five-star one-liners.
I paid by bank transfer. Can I get my money back?
It is harder, because transfers lack the chargeback protection cards carry — which is precisely why fake shops push them. Contact your bank immediately regardless: if the receiving account is flagged, a recall or reimbursement under the bank’s own procedures is sometimes possible, and reporting within hours rather than days improves the odds.
