SEOTops

It may be quite obvious but most people know for a fact that computers and search engines can’t really “see” visual images. Unlike humans, search engines are not advanced enough to interpret each and every object within images and this causes numerous problems for both Internet companies as well as day-to-day search users. When you tap into Google (or other lesser-known search engines for that matter), the search engine locates images using a text-based process. What happens is that the particular engine starts searching for text surrounding the image, such as captions and phrases within the links. The weakness in this searching process is that the results returned are not optimal, because the engine cannot recognize what’s in the image and instead churns out results while heavily relying on text to evaluate the content.

With Google announcing that they will be unveiling a new algorithm to eradicate frustration and difficulties pertaining to image searching, searching and collecting relevant visual content will no longer be tedious. This new technology has been formulated with the aim evaluate all the images on the Internet and rank them in order of importance whenever a search query is done. During a recent web conference held in Beijing, China, Google boasted that they are the first search engine to gain the ability to do away with conventional methods of examining images and their content to determine their relevance to a submitted query. They added that this technology works by recognizing a graphic-based pattern in a series of images. Then, using that visual benchmark, Google will then assess the relative importance within an image and comparing it to the rest.

Sounds confusing? Don’t be. Say if you were to search for “Nike”, Google’s brand spanking new engine will recognize the iconic swoosh instantly and groups a set of similar images and rate highly those that contain the logo prominently, instead of depending on the image captions alone. Nifty isn’t it?

Not since PageRank, one of the best search-based algorithms to surface since the year 1997, did other similarly significant tools pop up. Incidentally, PageRank was created by Sergey Brin and Larry Page who are, surprise surprise, Google’s very own founding fathers. Now with the advent of this new image-search engine christened “PageRank for Image Product Search”, you can bet your shares in Google that a new web revolution is set to take the world by storm.