A year after being announced, Google Images desktop now uses Google Lens when you click on the new upload a photo icon. In the works for a long time, the new update comes as Google Lens continues to gain popularity.
Most users should now be able to see Lens in action by going to https://images.google.com/
The user experience has been redesigned with a drag and drop feature and the ability to zoom in on the image and crop. You can then either search the image, search text or translate.
If you want to, you can still use the old visual search by clicking ‘find image source’.
Many users noticed the integration being tested by Google earlier this year but the feature should be available to all now.
What Is Google Lens?
Google Lens has been described as a visual search engine working in real-time. Quickly gaining popularity, the feature allows you to interact with the image you take in lots of different ways.
It’s very different to the well-known Google Image Search which essentially just helped you find the source of an image.
Google lens allows users to interact with a vast amount of information relating to the picture they have taken. It’s been available for mobile users but now it’s fully rolled out on desktop, you can save images for later to discover more.
Will Google Lens Affect SEO?
Google is always innovating when it comes to giving people more options to search the internet, and Google Lens now joins voice search.
Without a doubt, new technologies will affect SEO and the way we work – one of the main questions SEOs have been asking is how to see data on traffic that has come from Google Lens. Unformtabuely, Google Search Console doesn’t show such data at the moment and it could be a while off.
Replying to a Tweet a couple of days ago, John Mueller from Google said:
“Regarding Search Console, my feeling is it would need to be in a separate report, and Lens is probably still too new to be in a place where it won’t change significantly”.
It’s sure going to be exciting to watch the development of Google Lens and how marketers incorporate it into their work.