Google Image Search Collections

Google works on a new image search feature that lets you create collections, add image search results to your collections and annotate them. The source code includes multiple references to "collections", "notes", "folios", "clips", "groups" and the feature could integrate with Google Profiles.

For some reason, this looks like a standalone feature and notes aren't added to Google Keep.

Bing Image Search used to have a scratchpad, where users could save their images.

Google also had Notebook, a product that worked well for saving image search results. "Google Notebook is a simple way for users to save and organize their thoughts when conducting research online. This personal browser tool permits users to clip text, images, and links from the pages they're browsing, save them to an online notebook that is accessible from any computer, and share them with others," explained Google back in 2006.

{ Thanks, Florian K. }

Google's Search by Image and Special Effects

Google Image Search has a feature that lets you find images on the web by uploading the files or pasting their URLs. It's a clever feature, but it's a lot more clever than you imagined.

It's obvious that Google finds an image if exactly the same file is embedded by a web page or there's a link to that file. Google also finds images if you resize them, crop them or apply various photo effects.

Here's an image from a Wikipedia page, after resizing it and applying the pixelate effect from Picasa. Can Google find it?

Google can't find other sizes of the image, but if you look at the "Pages that include matching images" section, you'll find the image.

What if you convert the photo to black and white? Will Google's reverse image search engine be able to find it?

You'll get the same pages that include matching images:

Let's try something more difficult - apply multiple Picasa effects: soft focus, tint, filtered black-and-white and posterize. There's no way to recognize this image, right?

Wrong.

I used IrfanView to remove EXIF data and compress the image above a lot more. Here's what I got:

I edited the image in Paint and added some random shapes:

Here's the original photo:

To call this impressive is an understatement. It's a resilient algorithm that goes beyond matching pixels, colors, shapes - it understands the structure of the image, its essence.

{ The image from this post ("a red flower in the Philippines") has been licensed as Creative Commons Attribution by bingbing. Thanks, Brian Anderson. }

Navigation Arrows in Google Image Search

Google Image Search shows two arrows when you click a search results. The two buttons let you go to the previous or the next result. Until now, you could only use keyboard shortcuts (left/right arrow keys) to navigate between results.

I'm sure that website owners won't like this feature because it's much easier to go to the next image result, but users will like it. Maybe Google will also add a slideshow mode in full-screen, so that you don't have to click the "next" button over and over again.

New UI for Related Searches in Google Image Search

A few weeks ago, I posted about a new Google Image Search experiment for related searches. Now it's no longer an experiment.

Google shows some thumbnails next to the related searches, so you can preview the results and see if those queries are relevant. Until now, you had to mouse over the results to see the thumbnails.

Click one of the related searches and you can see bigger versions of the same thumbnails. There's an extra click to actually see all the results.

Google+ Photo Search With Image Recognition

Last year, Google Drive added an advanced image search feature powered by Goggles that recognizes objects and uses OCR technology to extract text. The same feature is now available in Google+: search for [sunflower], click "More", restrict the results to "Photos" and select "Most recent". You'll find sunflower images from Google+ posts that don't even include "sunflower", not even in the image filename.

This also works for the images you've uploaded to Picasa Web Albums/Google+ Photos or the images uploaded by your circles.

{ via Android Police }

Google's Atari Breakout Easter Egg

Is this the first Google Image Search Easter Egg? Search for [atari breakout] and you can play Atari's Breakout game. It's an arcade game introduced in April 1976. The game has an interesting story that involves Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak and it influenced Steve Wozniak's design for the Apple II computer.

"In the game, a layer of bricks lines the top third of the screen. A ball travels across the screen, bouncing off the top and side walls of the screen. When a brick is hit, the ball bounces away and the brick is destroyed. The player loses a turn when the ball touches the bottom of the screen. To prevent this from happening, the player has a movable paddle to bounce the ball upward, keeping it in play."

Google uses image search results for [atari breakout] instead of bricks, so the game is self-referential.

{ via TechCrunch, thanks Florian K. }

The Old Google Image Search in Chrome

There's a weird regression in Google Image Search if you use Chrome 27+ and enable "Extended Instant API" in chrome://flags. Extended Instant is a feature I've mentioned a few months ago and it's still a work in progress. It integrates Chrome with Google Search, replaces the new tab page with a special version of the Google homepage and removes the navigation bar and the search box from Google's search pages.

Back to Google Image Search. For some reason, when Extended Instant is enabled, Google Image Search switches to the old interface: thumbnails are smaller and you can mouse over to see more details about the images. When you click an image result, Google sends you to a new page that loads the original image file.

Google Image Search Shows the Images From a Page

There are many extensions and applications that let you see all the images from a web page. Another way to do that is to use Google Image Search. Search for [site:URL], where URL is the address of the page. This doesn't work for domain names, subdomains and subdirectories because Google shows the images for all the URLs that start with the name you've entered.

Example: [site:http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/search/knowledge.html].

It's not a new feature, it's just another way to use the site: operator.

Google Tests New Interface for Related Image Searches

Google Image Search tests a new interface for related searches. Instead of displaying a list of thumbnails when you mouse over the related searches, this experimental interface shows a small collage of images above the queries.

Click one of the related searches and Google shows an additional box. It looks like the black box that's displayed when you click an image search result:

Here's the standard interface:

In other related news, search by subject no longer works. Hopefully, it's just a bug:

{ Thanks, Abdul. }

Google Image Search to Add Filters For Animations and Transparent Images

Google tests a new version of the advanced image search page that lets you restrict the results to transparent images and animated images. The most popular image file formats that support transparency are GIF and PNG, while most animated images are GIF files.

Animated GIFs made a comeback and they're popular again. "Just as the LP has enjoyed a second spin among retro-minded music fans, animated GIFs — the choppy, crude snippets of video loops that hearken back to dial-up modems — are enjoying an unlikely vogue as the digital accessory of the moment," says the New York Times.

Update: the feature is now available. Check the animated GIFs for [Gmail] and the transparent PNGs for [Nexus 7].

Gray Background in Google Image Search

Google Image Search uses a gray background for almost the entire page. The same background color from the header of most Google services is now used for the list of image search results. It's a light shade of gray and it looks a little better than the white background.

"Try These Too" in Google Image Search

Google Image Search has a new feature that shows a list of 7 related images when you select a result. The section is called "try these too" and is a clever way to integrate the similar images feature. Click one of the related images and it will replace the original result. The first image from the list is always the original search result, so you can always go back to that image.

If you want to find a more comprehensive list of similar images, click "more sizes", then click the "More sizes" dropdown and select "Visually similar".

Google's Mobile Image Search Adds Infinite Scrolling

I'm not sure if this is an experiment or a feature that's currently rolled out. Google Image Search for mobile has a new interface that replaces pagination with infinite scrolling, just like the desktop interface. You can see a lot more images without having to swipe and it's much easier to find great search results. Another difference is that thumbnails no longer have the same size.

Google also added an option to "scroll to top", but this is more useful if you use Android. iOS has a built-in feature that scrolls to the top of the page (or the current view) when you tap the status bar.

When you select an image result, you'll probably see a new interface that focuses on the image and makes it more obvious that you can swipe right/left to check to other results. The browser's address bar is no longer displayed and the image is slightly smaller.

Unfortunately, just like the new desktop image search, the redesigned mobile interface replaces snippets with page titles and removes file sizes (in bytes, not pixels). The most important missing feature is the link to the full-size image. The image is actually loaded in the background and replaces Google's thumbnail, so you can still long press the image and use browser features that let you save the image or open it in a new tab.

Here's the old interface:

And here's a side-by-side comparison (old vs new):

The Old Image Search, Still Available

The old Google Image Search interface is still available in the OneBox result that's displayed for some Google searches like [tropical birds] or [europe map]. If you add "image", "images", "photo" or "photos" to your query, Google will show 4 times more image results. It's like a simplified image search interface inside the regular Google Search.

Quickly Switch to the Basic Google Image Search

If you don't like the new Google Image Search interface, you can't go back to the previous interface. Fortunately, Google still includes a link to a much older interface without infinite scrolling, but with useful information like the file size and a page snippet.

Infinite scrolling makes it difficult to get to the bottom of the page because Google continuously loads new image results as you scroll down. The best way to find the link that switches to the old interface is to press "End" on your keyboard (Fn + Right Arrow if you have a Mac) and click "switch to basic version". Google doesn't remember your setting, so the switch is not persistent.

New Google Image Search Interface

Long time, no see. After a long vacation, it's time to get back to the latest news from the Google world. Last month, Google tested a new image search interface and now it's been rolled out. It's the first desktop interface that drops the landing page and no longer loads the web pages that included the image results. The previous interfaces loaded these pages using iframes more like a courtesy to the third-party websites than to improve the user experience.

Google started to make the iframes less important when it moved them to the background. Then the mobile interfaces for smartphones and tablets came out and they didn't even load the original web pages. The new desktop interface is closer to the tablet interface: click an image result and use the left/right keyboard arrows to check the other results.

Here's the old interface (you may still see it):

"Instead of sending you over to a whole new page to preview an image, you'll see a preview of the image in your search results. Once you click on a image, you can quickly flip through the whole set of image previews using your keyboard. Your search results stay in the panel so you don't lose track of what you were doing; if you want to go back to looking at other search results, you can just scroll down and pick up right where you left off. If you want to check out the website where the image is hosted, you can click on the photo or use the tools available," explains Google.

Obviously, the traffic from Google Image Search will drop dramatically and webmasters will complain that Google uses their images and doesn't give anything in return. Google only hosts image thumbnails and loads the original images when you click the thumbnails, so it's now an image leecher that hotlinks to other people's images, using their bandwidth without generating page views or ad revenue. It's better for users, but expect to see many sites that stop displaying images when loaded from Google Image Search or use other anti-leech tricks.

Finding the right balance between user experience and webmasters' interests is a hard thing to do. Google now includes 4 links to the original web page, so you can click the image, the page title, the domain name and the "visit page" button, but I bet most people will click "view original image". Unfortunately, Google no longer displays two very important things: the image title and a short snippet from the page related to the image. Showing only the title of the page and the domain name is not enough to determine if the image is relevant. Other missing information: the EXIF data and the image size.

New SafeSearch Settings for Google Image Search

Google tried to simplify a feature using some clever algorithms, but made some people unhappy. Google's SafeSearch settings have always been difficult to understand and Google replaced the three options that were available (strict filtering, moderate filtering - default, no filtering) with only two options (filter explicit results, don't filter explicit results - default).

Here are the old filtering options:

- "Strict filtering filters sexually explicit video and images from Google Search result pages, as well as results that might link to explicit content."

- "Moderate filtering excludes sexually explicit video and images from Google Search result pages, but does not filter results that might link to explicit content. This is the default SafeSearch setting."

- "No filtering turns off SafeSearch filtering completely."

The new filtering options are even more difficult to understand. The default option is supposed to disable filtering, but it's actually a combination of "moderate filtering" and "no filtering", depending of the query. For innocent queries like [sherilyn fenn movies] Google switches to moderate filtering since it's not very likely that you're asking for explicit content. If you add some unambiguous keywords like "xxx" to the query, Google actually disables filtering.

Here's how Google describes the new settings: "In the SafeSearch Filtering section, click the checkbox to filter sexually explicit video and images from Google Search result pages, as well as results that might link to explicit content. If you choose to leave it unchecked, we will provide the most relevant results for your query and may serve explicit content when you search for it." So Google may show explicit images, but only if it's obvious that you're searching for it. No algorithm is perfect, so you'll probably find many examples when this doesn't work as intended.

A Google representative told CNet: "We are not censoring any adult content, and want to show users exactly what they are looking for - but we aim not to show sexually-explicit results unless a user is specifically searching for them. We use algorithms to select the most relevant results for a given query. If you're looking for adult content, you can find it without having to change the default setting - you just may need to be more explicit in your query if your search terms are potentially ambiguous. The image search settings now work the same way as in Web search."

For now, Google only changed how SafeSearch works for google.com, so the old settings are still available at google.co.uk and other country-specific Google sites.

Actively Discussed on Google+

Google shows a new annotation next to some web search results and image search results: "actively discussed on Google+". If you click "show", Google displays a recent Google+ post that includes the URL.

The feature is potentially useful, but it needs some fine-tuning because the Google+ posts aren't necessarily popular, while some search results don't need special annotations.

It's interesting to notice that Google+ popularity is a ranking factor for Google's search engine even when you're not logged in.

Google Image Search's Maximized Mode for Tablets

This seems to be a recent addition to Google Image Search's tablet interface. When you tap an image, Google maximizes it and hides the details placed at the bottom of the page. The nice thing is that you can continue to check the other image search results using the maximized mode.





I've only tested this feature on an iPad, but it should also work on an Android tablet. Hopefully, Google will add this great interface to the desktop. Speaking of feature requests, Google should let you open image search results in a new tab when you use the tablet interface.