‘Search by Image’ Feature Added to Google Images

Tired of searching for an image via text input? Took a picture on vacation and can’t remember the name of the monument you flashed a peace sign in front of? Feel like wasting time with a new Internet toy? If you’ve answered ‘yes’ to either of these questions, then you may be interested to know that Google recently updated its image search tool with the ability to search for images not with text, but with other images.

That’s right; in the event that a text query does you no good, Google allows you to either click the camera icon found in the search bar to locate an image to upload, or you can simply drag an image right into it either from your PC or a website. Once the image is uploaded, Google will attempt to deliver a gallery of related images, hopefully matching what you’re looking for. If it can’t find exact matches, it will give you a list of “very similar results”.

If no results prove to be that useful, you can improve (or attempt to improve) the search by adding a regular text query alongside the image name in the search bar. In personal tests, a lot of images I searched for didn’t give me the best of matches, proving that this feature is still in its infancy. But knowing Google, it will be improved over time. Ultra-popular images such as the White House and Marilyn Monroe yielded great results, but pictures of the CN Tower in Toronto did not.

Still, no one would expect this sort of tech to be perfect, and as it stands, it still could prove super-useful to those who can’t seem to remember the name or location of a building or some other landmark in a photo they took. Given what my memory is like, I can see me taking this feature for more of a spin in the future.