Google Image Search Test Now Shows Images Within PDFs
Google is digging deeper to find more images across the Web, now experimenting with new discovery methods, including looking within PDF documents.
Barry Schwartz on August 10, 2015 at 4:29 pm | Reading time: 1 minute
Google has confirmed with Search Engine Land that it is currently running an experiment to index images found within PDF documents and display those images within Google Image Search.
This feature was first noticed by Alex Chitu, who said he wasn’t sure if Google had the ability to find and display images within PDFs in their Google Image Search results. He was right, it was new.
Google told us they started testing this feature in June.
Here are some screen shots of image results within PDFs in Google Image Search.
As Alex says, you can find more examples of this by searching [google pdf site:static.googleusercontent.com].
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Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.
In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.
Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.
In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.
Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.