14 DAY TRIAL // Google introduced the new lightbox-style photo viewer for Google Image Search, changing the way images are previewed. Now, instead of an interstitial page, users can preview a larger version of an image and get more details on it inside the results page, eliminating much of the back and forth.
The new interface also presented the opportunity to rearrange some of the features, for example, Google is now showing a "Try these too" section inside the popup viewer which includes images you'd normally find in the "Similar images" section.
The technology behind the feature is not new, Google has been using it for a while, but the placement is. In fact, it's quite possible that a lot more people are going to notice the feature and use it now.
In turn, it should also mean people will spend more time on Google Image Search rather than visiting the sites hosting the images.
That said, the changes make it more likely that users will find the image they were looking for and, while it may lead to a drop in visits for some sites, all the losses would have been low-quality visits, people arriving at the page, realizing it wasn't what they needed and going back.
With the new preview UI and the even newer "Try these too" feature, people will go through more images before giving up, making it more likely they'll find what they need and more likely they'll visit a site after doing the search.
The same technology is used for the "Visually similar" option in Search by Image, for example, where users can provide a source image to either find its origin, better quality copies or images similar to it.
Google uses image analysis algorithms to determine similar images, though it uses several other factors as well.