>>9
I'm telling you right now. If you can manage to solve this problem and handle all possible cases, you will be a billionaire. I REALLY doubt imgseek people got anywhere with this.
The problem is not how the search is performed or even the time it takes. It is more about the accuracy of the results that are returned. There are just too many situations to account for outside of simple file hashes being correct. From sub images, crops, adjustments etc. even the slightest change ruins the hash values so now you have to get a machine to percieive the image as humans do.
If you want to look into this, study computer vision and you'll be exposed to alot more.