Mountain View, California — After attaining success with last months release of “Similar Images” feature in Google Labs, web search leader Google on Tuesday unveiled that it is publicly experimenting with a new image search interface, that helps users find and explore images being offered by Google, dubbed as: “Image Swirls,” which delivers image search results in a different and more visual interface.
The concept behind Google Swirl characteristic is similar to the “Wonder Wheel” options that allows users to explore related search queries with text and was recently introduced in Google Search Panel. But as for Swirl, which works with actual images not just image queries. Google describes Image Swirl:
“Image Swirl expands on technologies formulated for Similar Images and Picasa Face Recognition to distinguish how images should be grouped together and build hierarchies out of these groups,” Google wrote in a blog post. “Each thumbnail on the initial results page represents an algorithmically-determined representative group of images with similar appearance and meaning. These are not just the most relevant images–they are the most relevant groups of images.”
For instance, if you search for “Paris” you see layered results: The first features pictures of the French city, and the second displays photos of socialite Paris Hilton. Click on the Paris, France collection and it will “swirl” open into a circle of images, which become larger as you mouse over them.
Here’s what it looks like:
Google says to try Image Swirl to settles an evasive query visually, such as “apple,” “jaguar,” or “beetle”. They also indicate using it to explore different visual perspectives on queries like “Eiffel Tower,” “beach,” or “impressionism”. You can only use the feature for select queries at this point.
Clicking on the middle of the image takes the user to the external Web page where it is hosted. Clicking on one of the “similar” thumbnails activates the creation of another cluster around that thumbnail in the Google search results page.
The initial set of results, organized in the more traditional rectangular grid format, remain on the Google page but reduced in size and moved to the side, so that users still have access to it.
Undoubtedly, the feature is pretty cool. Although a bit “unconventional,” it is however very much suitable for Image Search since it gives a new way of looking at Image Search results. And, anyways, Google Labs experiments are of course just that — experiments. Some of them blossom out into full-fledged Google products. Others sit there and collect dust.
“Image Swirl currently works for more than 200,000 pre-determined queries and we plan to add more queries in the future. Available queries will auto-complete as you begin to type in the search box,” wrote Aparna Chennapragada, a Google product manager, and Yushi Jing, a Google researcher, in a blog announcement on Tuesday.
If you want to take it for a spin, just “swirl around” here and explore the search examples given.