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“My Photos” — Google Now Lets Find Your Google+ Photos Within Search

Barry Schwartz on May 23, 2013 at 3:59 pm

Google now lets you search your private photos and the photos your friends on Google+ share with you.

All you need to do is search on Google for keywords such as [my photos] or [my photos sunset] to bring up matching photos. You can even search for your friend’s photos such as [danny’s photos sunset] or [matt’s photos of food].

Note, Google explains that they use “computer vision and machine learning to help recognize more general concepts in your photos such as sunsets, food and flowers.” So this appears like it will get better over time, as it is used more and more by searchers.

Here is an example of Danny Sullivan’s sunset photos:

This works only when you are logged into your Google account and have photos and/or friend’s with photos in your circles.

Bing also has a similar feature where they integrate with Facebook to search friends photos via Bing Image search.

Here are more examples of Danny Sullivan’s photos, some that do work and some that do not work.

my-photos-of-arrested-development---Google-Search

But then there are cases where nothing is returned:

We are currently checking on how this differs from Search Plus Your World from last year. We will update our post when we learn more.

Postscript: Yes, photos showing up in Google Search from your Google+ account isn’t new. What is new, Google confirmed with us, is the ability to find them using more natural language like “my photos” and the use of computer-vision technology to try and better identify types of photos, such as those that are clearly recognizable landmarks.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.