Back in 2001, Google indexed approximately 250 million images. Today, that index has grown to over 10 billion. With the immense growth of image content, it has become necessary to provide faster and easier methods; to find precisely the right picture.
“We see images as a major source of inspiration, a way of connecting the world—and their growth is showing no signs of slowing down. We’ll work to make sure Google Images continues to evolve to keep up.” -Google Blog.
First, the evolution of Google Images acquainted us with, clip art, line drawings, faces and colors. Now, Google has introduced even more sophisticated computer vision technology; which it uses to power the “Similar Images” tool and “Similar Colors” refinement.
- “Similar Images” tool: This technology can recognize that there are nine subspecies of leopards, each with a distinct pattern of spots, and return image results of a particular subspecies; even if an image isn’t properly labeled.
- “Similar Colors” refinement: If your search is for “trucks”, and you refine your results to “red”, what you really want returned are the images of red trucks; not the surrounding image.
Over the next few days, Google will be updating Google Images “to match the scope and beauty of this fast-growing visual web, and to bring to the surface some of the powerful technology behind Images.” Here are six (6) more changes, you can look forward to:
- A tiled layout designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once.
- You can now get up to 1,000 images, all in one scrolling page.
- Larger thumbnail previews, on results pages
- Mouse over a given thumbnail image, and you get a larger preview, more information and other image-specific features; such as “Similar images.”
- Once you click on an image, you’re taken to a new landing page that displays a larger image. The website hosting the image, is immediately visible behind it.
- Optimized keyboard navigation for faster scrolling through many pages. Utilizes standard Web keyboard shortcuts, such as Page Up/Page Down.
This is all very nice. Thank you Google. But, I am certain the research, development and maintenance of this new technology; cost/s money. Turns out I might be right. You probably won’t be surprised to learn, that the advertising giant has something new for ad clients. Google is launching a new format, called Image Search Ads. These ads will only appear on Google Images, and allow ad clients to include a thumbnail image; alongside lines of text. Chaaa…Ching!
