Google’s search by Image

Google has announced the launch of a new image search feature, search using an image as the source, Google then searches for images similar to it and returnes both image and text results. This technology has been available on mobile for some time from Google Goggles, but now it’s coming to the desktop.

Google explains:

You might have an old vacation photo, but forgot the name of that beautiful beach. 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.

To search using an image, go to images.google.com and just put your picture in the search box. There are many ways to do this:

Google says the feature returns the best results for images that have related content already on the web, it's most effective with things like landmarks, artworks as opposed to images of family.

Google also announced a bundle of other new search features, including bringing voice search to the desktop, Google Instant for Images, and something called Instant Pages, which in Google's Chrome browser pre-loads popular pages before you click on the search results, meaning you view them far quicker.

These new features will be comming out to users on Google.com over the coming weeks.