Earlier this week at its Inside Search event, Google announced a new way to search the web called Search By Image. Rather than enter a text query, Search By Image lets you begin your search with an image and Google will (try to) tell you what it is and show visually similar images. Search By Image isn't the first start-with-an-image search engine, and isn't even Google's first version of this kind of search tool. (TinEye has offered reverse image search since May 2008, and Google Goggles was Google's first search-by-image tool back in 2009.) But Google is the big and new kid on the block, s [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images | Search Engines: Photo & Image Search | Top News

Mobile innovation is fueling Google's search offerings for the desktop, as the company today announced two new search interfaces -- Voice and Image -- inspired by mobile Voice Search and Google Goggles, respectively. With Voice Search for the desktop, which is a feature of the Chrome browser, users click a microphone icon in the search box, and then speak into their computer's microphone. Part of the idea, according to Google execs speaking at a media event in San Francisco, is to make voice search ubiquitous and increase awareness, to increase adoption. Already, mobile speech inputs t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Android | Google: Images | Google: Voice Search | Top News

The Google Search Blog announced two new user interface changes for image results on the Google web search results. Google has added a larger thumbnail image when you hover your cursor over image and Google will show more images when Google can detect your search intent asks for it. For example, a search for [flowers] returns these results and when you hover over an image, it expands: But when you search for [flower images] you many many more images: You can trigger the web results to show more images by adding keywords like "photos", "pictures", and "images" to a query. R [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images | Google: User Interface | Google: Web Search

Google announced you can now sort Google Images by subject. To see this in action, go to Google Images, conduct a search and look on the left hand side for the search option. Directly under the "More" link, you will find the default sort option set to "by relevance," click on the "Sort by subject." The results will then shift and group images by subject topic. In the example above, a search for [london] images sorted by subject gives me topics such as london eye, london big ben, london bridge and so on. Personally, I do not see this sorting option yet, but I will soon. Google [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images

Google Images is now showing fresher images for search results that are trending and/or news related. For example, if you search for [schwartzel masters] in Google Images, you will find tons of images from the golf tournament yesterday. They are all fresh images, mostly pulled from news sources, mostly time stamped with phrases such as "3 hours ago," and so on. Here is a picture: Google has labeled fresh web search results with "X minutes or hours ago" for years now. But this is the first time I have seen Google do so with Google Images. Hat tip to @KeriMorgret for spotting t [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images

Google has made improvements to the similar images filter they added back in 2009. Google explained the improvements include: Fresher similar image results More comprehensive results for similar filters Support for site command on similar filters Here is a screen shot of one of the results: To access this yourself, go to Google Images, search for something and hover over the image. There should be a link that reads "similar," click on it to get similar images. Erik and Jeff from the Google team said in a post: Today we’re announcing an update to Similar Images, the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images

Contrary to what I reported earlier based on a seemingly very credible CNN report, Google is not planning to release a version of its mobile app Goggles with face recognition technology. Google has had the capability for several years but so far refrained from putting it out in the world other than on Picasa. I spoke to Google at some length and a spokesperson said that the CNN piece was based on totally inaccurate conjuncture. That speculation was in turn based on an interview with a Google engineer Hartmut Neven taken out of context. The Google spokesperson said that Google wouldn't pu [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Google: Images | Google: Mobile

Google has captured a bunch of new satellite imagery that shows the devastation of the 8.9 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. You can see those images in Picasa or on Google Earth with a KML file (Japan Earthquake and Tsunami). Separately Google has set up a "people finder" for those still missing in Japan. It also offers a "crisis response" page with news, emergency resources and updates. You can also donate there directly to the Japanese Red Cross. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Features: General | Google: Images | Google: Maps & Local | Google: Outside US | Google: Picasa | Magazine

Google's weekend update includes two new recent updates for Google Search and Image Search. (1) Google Image Search added an SVG image search filter. Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) graphics are scalable graphics that can be used in many ways. Google began indexing and crawling SVG files in September 2010. Then Google began ranking those file types in the results but not until recently did Google offer a filter option. Now, if you search Google Images on the bottom left there should be a filter for the SVG filetype. (2) Google Maps on Google's web search results can now show satel [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Images | Google: Maps & Local

Google has confirmed that they are now updating the Google Image Search index of images at a more rapid rate. Earlier this week, I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that webmasters noticing this at WebmasterWorld. Webmasters were saying that Google Image Search was including their new images within a "few days" as opposed to a few months. A Google spokesperson confirmed this: We recently made some changes to increase the rate at which we update images in our index to improve the experience for our users and provide them with fresher images in both web and image search. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images | Top News

The Google AdWords Blog announced a new ad format available on the image search vertical. The new ad format is the old-style leaderboard display ad. The leaderboard is an image ad 728 pixels wide by 90 pixels tall. Here is a picture of a leaderboard ad on Google Image search: These ads are charged on both a CPM and CPC model, depending on your ad settings and goals. Google began testing image ads on image search in 2008. You can learn more about the display ads available in the Google help center. Google said: Today we're expanding the image ad formats available on Google [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Images

Google is allowing searchers to go back to the classic Google Image search design. In July, Google revamped their Image Search design, which provided a "tiled" layout, infinite scroll, larger thumbnail images and a hover preview that offers more information about the image. To revert back to the old design, conduct any search on Google Images and then scroll to the bottom of the search results and then click the "Switch to basic version" link at the bottom of the page. You can see the old "basic version" for a query of [flowers] if you like and then switch back to the "standard version." [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images | Google: User Interface

A few months ago, Google revamped their Google Image search and with that, the report offensive images feature dropped out. This morning, I noticed the feature is now back in the search results. It works a lot like the old method, you click on the "SafeSearch" link on the right of the Google Image search box and select "Report offensive images." Then a new button named "report" is added to the images. You can then click on the report button to report that image. Here are screen shots: Postscript: As of at least November 9th, Google has once again removed this feature fro [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images

Amit Agarwal reports Google is testing scrollable images on the Google India home page. I personally do not see it, but here is a picture and video from Amit. I should note, Google Korea has had an animated home page in the past. But these images on Google India seem very interesting. Amit explains the images shown on the home page "features an image gallery of popular search phrases." Popular or news worthy or trending? I am not sure. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images | Google: User Interface

If you search for an image on Google Image Search and then mouse over the result, Google will let you find "more sizes" of that image. For example, I searched for [cow] and hovered my mouse over the first result. As you can see, there is a link to "more sizes" for that image: When you click on it, you are taken to a special filter that only shows you that image, but in multiple sizes from multiple sources. Here is a look at that page: As Alex Chitu said, this is a feature Bing had for some time and Google just recently added it. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images

As we know with the new Google Image redesign that Google would be pushing image ad formats for image search. Yesterday, I was doing a search for [weeds] and I spotted an image ad from Google encouraging advertisers to try out Google Image AdWords. I don't believe I ever saw an image ad from Google, promoting image ads, so I figured I document what the ad looked like. Here is a picture: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords | Google: Images

Before the revamped Google Image Search design went live 9 days ago, there was a clear and quick way to report offensive images to Google. In fact, Google released the report offensive image feature just about a year ago, due to complaints. Now, that feature is no longer found in the new design. Here is a picture of the old way to report offensive images in Google Image Search: As you can see now, that "report offensive image" link is gone: I asked Google about this and they made it sound like they simply forgot to put it in the new design. They didn't say that, instead the [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images

Google announced a new image search UI and new Image Search Ads today. Barry wrote about the new UI last week. Consumer image search is much improved in several respects while the new Image Search Ads opens up ads on Google Images to all advertisers. It had been essentially limited to retailers with image feeds via product extensions. In terms of the consumer announcement, Google is rolling out a new UI and several new features. They include a new, more attractive "tiled" layout, infinite scroll (mimicking a similar feature on Bing), larger thumbnail images and a hover preview that offer [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images | Top News

Google seems to be testing a brand new design for image search. I personally do not see it, but as I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable a few days ago, some people are seeing the new image search design. Today, I finally found pictures of the design via a Twitter user. Here is the new Google Image Search design that Google appears to be testing: Supposedly, the images continue to scroll in as you scroll through the page. This is very different from the current live image search design. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images | Google: User Interface | Top News

There's no formal blog post about this that we know of yet, just a tweet from Google's Jeremy Hylton announcing that images are now showing up in Google's real-time search results. Actually, you have to specifically request to include images with your results. After doing a search for "lunch" and clicking to see Updates from the left options menu, you then have to click the new "Updates with images" to see results like this. Note that the focus here is still on the update; this is not a real-time image search tool. If you're looking for that, here are several options: TwitCaps [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Google: Images | Google: Real Time Search | Search Engines: Photo & Image Search