Google Lens Coming to Google Image Search: A Look at the New Features | SEO

Introduced in 2017, Google Lens is one of the newest visual search tools that enable users to be able to receive information through the images that they take. Compared to other visual search engines that are currently available, Google Lens stands out as one of the best. With Google celebrating its twentieth anniversary, one important announcement that they have made is that Google Lens will be coming to Google Images.

With the update scheduled to be launched on September 27, this update aims to provide more functionality into Google Images and make it an even more reliable and versatile visual search engine. With the integration arriving in a few days, here are some of the features that you should know about.

Featured Videos

Google Images aims to provide more quality visual content to its users, and this means integrating video to allows users to have a better context of what they are searching for. Featured videos will be able to show videos related to your image. This comes in handy when it comes to important locations such as buildings and historical landmarks.

These videos can come from streaming sites such as YouTube, Dailymotion, and Vimeo, with Google ensuring that only the best quality videos would be shown. The addition of featured videos provides another avenue in which users would be able to discover relevant video content, which makes YouTube SEO even more important. This is surely a handy feature that will bring in more traffic to video streaming sites and provides an even more comprehensive amount of information to the users.

Google Image AMP Stories

The Story feature has become more popular due to apps like Instagram (which can be integrated into Facebook) and Snapchat. Providing users with a way to post temporary updates on their profiles became a sure-fire hit, which Google aims to replicate using their new AMP Stories on Google Images. This works in a similar way that Instagram and Snapchat stories would work and helps provide information in a more dynamic and interactive way.

Publishers would be able to create their own AMP stories to provide information, while Google AI is also being planned to provide them the ability to create their own as well. These stories will be created for search results related to notable personalities such as athletes and celebrities and would have the same kind of functionality that can be found on other platforms. This means that stories would also have links to more content, which can include images and video.

AMP Stories allows Google Images to become a platform similar to social media sites while providing the users with a more diverse and creative way to access and interact with content.

New ranking algorithm and tags

Another new change that will be arriving at Google Images is a change in the image ranking algorithm. The new algorithm will take into account factors, such as image location, size and prominence, and the authority of the hosting site. This would help prevent users from finding unrelated images, along with being able to find images within a website, which addresses the long-time issue of missing images when users access a website. Website authority ensures that the website is trustworthy and has quality content, which means that you will be getting what you have searched for.

Image tags will also be included, which allows users to be able to look for product images that they might be interested in buying. This can be a big help to e-commerce sites, as they now have a location where they can discover businesses and stores related to their products. Users will also have the ability to create image Collections, which allows them to group certain images together, which Google would take into account in your next search queries. These new features help create a more personalized search and ensure that your image search results would be more on point than before.

Key Takeaway

Google Images is one of Google’s most widely used tools, and with Google Lens integration, it becomes an even more effective visual search tool that provides quality content that us beyond images. With this announcement being a part of Google’s twentieth anniversary, expect more big announcements and new features on Google’s other tools and services.

If you have questions and inquiries about visual search and SEO in general, leave a comment below and let’s talk.