Google is upgrading its visual search capability on Google Lens to make shopping easier ahead of the holidays.
Users will be able to discover visual matches of products with specific product information when using Google Lens for shopping, including its price across retailers, reviews, or where to buy the item. All they need to do is click a photo and go to Google Lens.
Lilian Rincon, VP of product for Google Shopping, told Retail Brew it's like the best of the product details page in Google Search is now in Google Lens.
“We are now going to merge the power of Google’s AI with the Shopping Graph…to help you identify specific products and details about them with just a snap of a photo,” Rincon said.
Lens uses its photographic touch to search for products using images clicked on a user’s phone camera or images saved on their device. (Lens is the little camera button beside the text box on Google Search.)
Google is launching the new capability across top holiday shopping categories including toys, electronics, and beauty to target holiday shoppers, Rincon added.
Google said Lens has seen nearly 20 billion visual searches every month, and 20% of those searches are shopping-related. Plus, Lens queries are now one of the fastest growing query types on Search, and younger users (ages 18–24) are engaging most with Lens.
Besides perfecting visual search queries, other use cases for Google Lens, which launched in 2017, include reverse image search.
The idea for the upgrade came from users, Rincon added.
“Visual matching has been helpful for however many years,” she said. “But what we heard was that actually it’s not just about finding a visually matched product. People really wanted to find out reviews in particular about the product or compare prices.”