Say what you want about Google’s forays into other product lines and services, when it comes to search, Google is still king.
Today the company announced it is simplifying search in Google Images by adding a new layer – sorting. The ability to sort Google Images should clean up the interface and results. The way it works is that you do a Google Images search for something like “flowers” then the results page comes up with a ton of flowers but no rhyme or reason to it. Click the sort button on the options bar to the left and it should break the search down by flower topic such as “roses” or “rhododendrons.”
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In a blog post Google said that the service will rollout globally this week. As of this writing the service was not yet available this reporter.
The new sort by subject feature is a graduation of the Image Swirl and Similar Images projects produced by Google Labs. Sorting by subject uses algorithms that identify relationships among images found on the web and presents those images in visual groups.
“By looking at multiple sources of similarities, such as pixel values and semantic relationships, and by mining massive amounts of data, we can make meaningful connections and groupings among images,” wrote Donald Tanguay of the Google Images team.
Google Images Search was redesigned in July, 2010 to move to a tiled format with more results on a single page. The update also produced a feature that would allow marketers to place the image of their choice next to an advertisement.
Check out the video below for Google’s introduction to the new feature.
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