Google Lens & eCommerce
The Google homepage rarely changes.
Its simplicity beat Yahoo! way back when, however, I thought I’d share a big change that arrived this week: the addition of Google Lens on the homepage.
Since its launch on mobile in 2017, Google Lens’ capabilities have improved through features such as multi search. Lens has also quietly replaced the reverse image search function in Chrome. Because Lens is essentially a Google Search plugin, it seemed just a matter of time before we saw an option to utilize it from the Search homepage. Now that we have that option, Lens is much more accessible.
Rajan Patel, Google’s VP of Engineering, says that the Google Search homepage doesn’t change very often, so this is a significant development. If you frequently visit the website, you will notice the addition of a Lens shortcut in the Search bar, next to the voice search button.
When you click the button, you will be prompted to drag and drop a picture, upload one, or input the file’s URL. When you press the Search button, you’ll be taken to a mobile-first results page where you can crop the image to narrow down the results.
Google originally tested Lens integration on the Search homepage in February of this year. Now, the integration appears to be spreading broadly for web-based searches. Google’s image search service is strikingly similar, returning images that visually match your search phrase. Lens, on the other hand, is a little more advanced, allowing you to narrow your search to a specific section of an image, analyze for text, translate a foreign language, or find buying links for shown objects.
You may believe that Google Image Search is obsolete now that Lens is available on the Search site. The former, however, still allows text as a query, whereas Lens requires an image to begin a search. However, the Lens button’s more prominent position may introduce many more people to the feature.
This is a feature that will certainly help eCommerce SEO; searches can now discover similar products based on images – with greater ease.