We’ve talked about Search-by-Image before, but here’s a nuance we haven’t mentioned…
When you do a Search-By-Image, you upload an image to Google so it can find similar kinds of images. To do an SBI search, just click on the camera icon, then upload your image.
It works remarkably well. But sometimes, it needs a bit of direction–a little guidance to make your result more precise.
For instance, you can search for a picture of a caterpillar that you photographed in order to figure out its name. Here’s the one I found:
When you do a SBI, you see this result:
That’s all true, but not helpful. This caterpillar is NOT the caterpillar of the European gypsy moth. They look like this:
So… how can we modify the query to improve the search result?
Easy–just give it a bit of a hint–like this:
Now that you’ve got some decent “Visually similar images” you can click on that link and quickly find a matching caterpillar.
It doesn’t take long to figure out that this is a Spotted Tussock Moth caterpillar (3rd row, 2cnd from the left).
But wait… there’s more!
You can ALSO modify the query to include other search operators you know about.
Here’s a thumbnail image of a person that I couldn’t identify off the top of my head–although I knew she had some kind of connection with the Rochester Institute of Technology (a college in Rochester, NY).
When I just a simple SBI search, this is what I get (the top SERP), but if I modify the search to include site:rit.edu (their domain), the result is much more precise.
The result on the bottom of the page tells me exactly what I need to know.
Search Lesson
1. Remember that you can modify the query in the Search-By-Image operation… including adding a site: restriction. This is really handy for searching within sites that you know are affiliated with the object of your search.
Search on!
