The world is visual—now search is too – Bing Visual Search
More and more businesses are providing image recognition and visual search capabilities for their customers. Google, Amazon, Pinterest, Bing, and a host of retailers have all developed their own visual search engines
For example, Pinterest has long been one of the top contenders providing visual search capability. Getting proactive now in developing your visual search techniques will allow your business to better compete online in the years to come. “The future of search will be about pictures rather than keywords,” stated Pinterest CEO, Ben Silbermann.
Google has made significant developments using visual search with Google Lens – and wants to turn your phone into a visual search engine. According to Moz Google SERP Feature Graph, images are returned for 30% of search queries on Google.
Looking ahead, I believe that we are entering a new phase of computing: an era of the camera, if you will. It’s all coming together at once—a breathtaking pace of progress in AI and machine learning; cheaper and more powerful hardware thanks to the scale of mobile phones; and billions of people using their cameras to bookmark life’s moments, big and small. – Aparna Chennapragada, VP, Google Lens and AR
TIP: For a comprehensive resource about the latest on all things visual search, including trends, stats, news, and strategy tips, see Medium.com’s Visual Search — The Ultimate Guide.
Supercharging website images for organic search
- Optimize alt-tags and metadata. Creating descriptive, keyword-rich file names and description is critical since any text that goes along with an image alerts Google as to what the image is all about.
- Create an image sitemap. If your images are rendered via JavaScript, using a correctly-formatted image sitemap will help Google index all images which then, in turn, increases their chances of appearing on the search results
- Use the ideal image size and format for the platform. If possible, resize and compress the images to reduce your website’s loading time.
- Ensure the images are mobile-friendly. Currently, the most visual search takes place on mobile apps like Google Lens and Pinterest Lens, so it is only imperative that your images are optimized to be displayed on this platform.
- Optimize your featured images in your blog.
Keeping up with the rise of visual search
While it is unlikely that visual search will make text-based search obsolete, they will likely become just as popular. So it’s crucial for businesses to invest in a SEO-friendly website design to ensure that they are up-to-date and relevant – keeping up with the rise of visual search!
Enjoy Super Bowl LIV!
Stacy Layman
Director, Marketing and Creative Services
Jacksonville, Florida
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