Google overhauls Image Search
Google |
Google Image Search has always been a very useful feature under the search engine giant’s bevy of services for the common researcher and online marketers alike. Since its launch, it has since become instrumental in evolving the search industry as it branched out of the then customary text-based algorithms popularized by earlier search engines such as Yahoo, Lycos and AltaVista.
This week at a press event in their San Francisco office, nine years after its unveiling, Google has revamped its image search property with a major redesign of its user interface, a handful of function enhancements and an image-based advertising format. These can sure change the way the common user, online marketers and players in the search market (like us here at SEOP.com) conduct and leverage on image searches.
At a press event in their San Francisco office, Google unwrapped its overhauled Image Search with a redesign of its interface that focuses on speed and comprehensiveness. Google Images Product Manager Nate Smith pointed out the new changes starting with the displayed image thumbnails appearing rather larger and organized into a single result page.
Each result page can hold up to a thousand thumbnails and has “instant scrolling” to make it easier to find the specific image you’re looking for and reduces the number of clicks during search.
“And the second thing we have changed about this UI, which is also really exciting, is that we give you better information about the image on the results page so you can make a better decision about what images you are interested in.” said Smith.
The thumbnails use “hover panes” that when moused over display more information about the image like its URL of origin and image size, a feature similar to Twitter and Facebook’s hover cards.
| Here’s the video of the event from Google if you want to watch the announcement. |
The search engine company also unveiled Image Search Ads which allows online marketers and advertisers to display an image next to their text ads. This new ad format implementation seems only logical, given that one of the reasons why users go to Google Images is to find out what different products look like before purchase.
This new ad format, as simple and unobtrusive as it is, works well for both consumers and brands. It affords brands the chance to showcase specific products next to their ads and reach the millions of users who, according to Ben Ling, Director of Search Products at Google, are amassing billions of page views on a monthly basis. For consumers, the ads will be entirely relevant to their search queries and would provide an even more convenient way to discover brands and conduct purchases.
As of writing, the new Google Image Search has been rolled to only a small percentage of local interfaces worldwide though we can expect it to be fully implemented within the next few days.
According to Ben Ling, Director of Search Products at Google, this is the first significant revamp since its launch date. From the 250 million images it indexed during its first year online, it now boasts of 10 billion image indexes at the start of this year’s third quarter.
“A new interface that offers tremendous comprehensiveness with incredible speed, the new hover pane, the new landing page and our new ad product; but for us it’s just the start of Google Images. The product is nine years in but we have a lot more that we can do.” said Marissa Mayer, VP-Search Products and User Experience.
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RSpears @ July 21, 2010
The “Infinite scroll” is great, but the touted “cleaner look and feel” is only clean because they cleaned out lots of very useful information, like the URL, Size and text snippet that you must now hover to each picture individually (with a short delay!) to see. That information was a key element in doing a serious search, providing contextual cues to the user that guided the choice of which image to open. It will be sorely missed.
As I recall, Google already tried to remove the context a while back then put it back in after users protested (I know I did). I sure hope they do the same now!
Good point, Nathan.
It really helped that these details were all present at the same time so I can do a quick scan, but now we’ll have to hover on the images one by one which I find so counterproductive. Now imagine the users who would have to deal with slower machines.
ALSO, when in a hurry, I sometimes use ctrl+F to find specific details (like file formats) and this sadly no longer works when I checked out the new interface. At this point, the hover pane seems a lot more like a feature only casual and moderate searches would enjoy, and I guess we’ll have to get used to it. Like you said, it will be missed.