So you have one photo and want to know everything about it. Ideally, you would share that photo with friends on forums and social networking websites like Facebook, Twitter in hope to get some information from either of your friend. How about using ‘Google Search by Image’ feature as your friend to get such information quickly? Google Image Search now has new feature ‘Search by Image’ that allow you to search internet for similar photos, related webpages to specific uploaded image.
Google Search similar images & related websites
You can easily find similar photos to specific photo that you have stored on your computer or have seen it online. Besides visual results in the form of related images, it also provide relevant websites and webpage links related to that specific photo.
1. Open Google Image Search website. Check for the Camera icon on the left side of ‘Search Images’ button. If there is no camera icon, implies ‘search by image’ feature is not yet available to you. Wait for few days for this feature availability in your region.
2. If you have camera icon, then we can get going with ‘search by image’. Click the camera icon and this will pop-up small window for selecting image to be used for searching the internet.
3. You can directly paste URL of an online image by clicking ‘paste image url’ option. Alternatively, you can upload image from your computer by clicking ‘choose file’ button or drag it directly from your desktop to that window.
4. Once image is selected, it will be uploaded and Google will start searching for content related to that image. It will take little more time to complete search as against time taken for usual text searching on Google.
5. Results page will show the preview of uploaded or selected image on the left side of the search box. Below it will show possible related and similar photos. It will also list webpages or websites containing the uploaded image.
Video Teaser: Google’s ‘Search by Image’ feature
‘Search by Image’ feature: Things to note
1. ‘Search by Image’ feature is done using vision technique. Uploaded or selected image is matched with images in Google’s index using vision techniques for best possible related image results.
2. You can easily integrate ‘search by image’ feature in web browser and use it by just right clicking on specific image by using extensions for Firefox and Google Chrome browsers.
3. It is more suited to get best relevat results for popular landmarks, famous people, paintings, movies and so on. Searching for personal look-a-like photos may not produce relevant results.
4. Results page of ‘Search by Images’ displays: preview image, best guess, visually similar images, pages that include matching images and other searches related to the image.
