Jun 15, 2011 11:20 GMT  ·  By

The second big feature coming straight from the mobile space that Google unveiled at its special event earlier is Search by Image, inspired by Google Goggles, which enables users to search the web by providing an image rather than a query.

The image can be from the web or from users' computers, regardless of the source, Google will try to recognize the image and provide a text search for it.

Even if it fails to recognize what is in the image, it will search for copies of the original on the web, very much like TinEye, and also retrieve images it believes are similar.

All in all, Search by Image is a huge step forward and, while the technology is not necessarily revolutionary and even if there are already similar tools online, having it in front of hundreds of millions of people and making it seamless to use is going to have a big impact.

"Sometimes when you're on your computer, you may not have the words to describe exactly what you’re looking for. You might have an old vacation photo, but forgot the name of that beautiful beach," Google explained.

"Typing [guy on a rocky path on a cliff with an island behind him] isn’t exactly specific enough to help find your answer. So when words aren’t as descriptive as the image, you can now search using the image itself," it added.

"To search using an image, go to images.google.com and just put your picture in the search box," it said.

The feature is still being rolled out so it may not show up for you yet. If you're feeling lucky you can try to get a version of the page with Search by Image by refreshing the image search page or browsing through the localized versions of Google, for the UK, Germany or any of the other 32 countries where the feature will be available.

When Google finishes rolling it out, there will be a small camera icon inside the search box. Clicking on it will enable you to either provide an URL for the image or upload your own. Even better, you can drag and drop images from other web pages or even your desktop onto the Image Search page.

The results for Search by Image come in several flavours. If Google manages to recognize the image, this works best for famous landmarks, art and animals, it will do a text search based on it.

At the same time, Google will scour its index for exact copies of the image, of different sizes perhaps, which it stumbled upon on the web. The results page will also list images that are similar to the one you provided, based on several factors, but that are not the exact same image.

That's plenty of functionality all rolled into one feature and it greatly extends Image Search's usefulness. If nothing else, it serves to show that there is still plenty of innovation and advances to be made in search and that search doesn't just mean text.

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Google's new Search by Image
Google Search by Image retrieves several types of results
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