Mountain View, California – Relentlessly striving to enhance its product and services, search engine titan Google recently tweaked its image search functionality making it more visually appealing that will allow users to preview images when you hover over links to related searches in Google Images.
On the company blog, its said that the new preview feature for image search, which will help users explore a topic visually with a more refined method of locating related images within a search.
Now moving on to conducting an image search, users will see the typical SERP with photos related to their queries. But with the new feature, hovering over the images will open a dark gray box with previews of three to five images from the related searches–no click-through required. They will see a window pop up on their page containing some results likely to appear atop that page.
For instance, if you search New York City on Google Images, Google’s relevant searches are for [new york city 2012], [new york city police], [new york city skyline], etc.:
However, if you wish to see more images of New York City’s skyline, then simply hover over the blue link and the new panel will pop up with three to five skyline pictures that you can then click on and see the website for the image and see the full-size image, or further refine your search with Google’s options:
According to Google product manager Peter Linsley, detailed the functionality on the official Google blog as the change to image search will be enforced over the next few weeks. Linsley employs the example of searching for Greece and how the new related image search will work if you are looking for Santorini, Greece. This will allow any would be tourists to confirm if that is the search they want without having to go to the actual page.
“Now, with more visual search links, I can hover over the links on the top of the results, like [santorini greece], and see a panel pop up with images of Santorini. Without having to type more words into the search box or clicking through, I can quickly glance at the pictures of Santorini. If I decide to click through, I find new links for further refined or related searches, such as [oia santorini greece] or [santorini greece sunset]. Now I’m sold, I want to see more Santorini images.”
In fact, image Search places a strong significance on the importance images can play in maximizing content as part of an SEO strategy. Hence, these enhancements should really quicken the pace whenever you are looking for your choicest picture. Again, formulating content that includes images with keyword-rich, high-quality metadata will give a website an extra boost.
Do not worry if you cannot see the new related image search features just yet whilst searching for images, as Google is rolling out the new feature globally over the coming weeks, Google said in a blog post.