An image search method and system using face detection, begins with receiving a query submitted by a user. Next a query word is searched in the query from an image resource using an image search engine to obtain an initial image collection. Any faces are detected in each image in the initial image collection which has been searched. A search for the query word in a text surrounding each image having the face in the initial image collection is performed. A determination is made whether the query word indicates at least one person's name in the surrounding text matching the query word. An image an image in the initial image collection is returned to a user in which the face is included and the query word in the surrounding text indicates the person's name.