The visual or visual search searches (along with the voice search) are changing the way we understand SEO. The marketers need to be up to date in order to maintain a good level of .
Gone are the days where the only focus were the keywords. The search visual offers an experience increasingly similar to the way users interact with our environment in everyday search. And for companies, being among the pioneering brands of visual searches offers many advantages. buy youtube views So, I want to explain what exactly this technology is and how to implement it in your business to attract more customers .
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What is and how visual search works and why does it benefit online sales?
Have you ever looked for your house keys among a lot of disparate objects? Well, you were doing a visual search .
The searches visual is so natural to us, we are not even aware of them. In our day to day we are constantly identifying objects, looking for similarities and establishing relationships between them. But when we want a computer to do it, things get complicated.
To begin, we will distinguish between different types of searches related to the image search :
- Traditional search or by keywords : the user enters a search term in text format and the search engine offers a series of related images.
- Reverse search : the user enters an image and the search engine returns a series of related images. This type of search uses the metadata of the images to find results.
- Detailed search : is one in which the computer identifies and offers as results the different objects within a photograph. This option is very interesting in terms of purchases and conversions, but requires a much greater degree of sophistication.
The visual searches are based on a series of algorithms of artificial intelligence that train computers to distinguish the different elements of an image, such as color, shape and size . To obtain maximum precision, it is also necessary for the computer to prioritize among them in the same way as a human would. Although there have been great advances in this field, to this day we do not understand well enough how our brain works in this sense, so we can not reproduce it faithfully either.
In the future, visual search is expected to be able to search for conceptually related images, for example, if we introduce the image of a piece of furniture, it will return other household items that combine well with it. In short, it is a field in full development and with a promising future.
Advantages of visual search for companies and how to implement it
Visual searches are a growing trend that can bring multiple benefits for brands :
- Attract the interest of the potential audience . Users are attracted to the possibility of searching through images , so this option has a great acceptance. For example, Pinterest’s visual search function managed to attract more than 130 million monthly searches in just 6 months since its launch.
- Increase conversions . One of the functionalities with more potential for brands is to use visual search so that users find the products they are interested in buying, making it easy for them to convert.
- Improve the experience of users . Searching for a specific product through text can be a long and cumbersome process, but if we can introduce an image of what we want in the search engine, this is greatly simplified. The user saves time and gets more accurate results, so their degree of satisfaction will be greater.
- Offer cross-selling opportunities . This type of search facilitates showing the user products very similar to the one they are looking for or complementary, for example, the shoes that can go better with a specific dress. Therefore, the number of items and the average price per purchase increase.
Today the SEO specialized in visual search is taking its first steps. These are some ideas that you can start implementing to optimize your web for visual searches:
- Include an alt text and a description in all the images, focusing on the keywords by which a user could search for them.
- Optimize the size and weight of the images, so that they are displayed with sufficient quality but take a short time to load (keep in mind that more and more searches are made from mobile devices).
- Clearly classify the visual content of your page by means of badges, so that searchers can instantly identify if it is a static image, a video or a GIF.
- To take care of the schema markup of the page, to clearly indicate to the searchers the type of content and its characteristics.
- Contextualize the images well . Keep in mind that after a visual search , the user will click on the image to get more information. Therefore, it is essential that it is well contextualized so that it quickly finds the data it needs, including the possibility of buying the product in question.
What platforms of visual search exist today?
More and more search engines and brands are getting on the visual search car. Take a look at these examples to inspire you and see some of the potential of this technology.
Google Images and Google Lens
Google Images has been with us for years and each time it improves its functionalities. It allows you to search for images both from text and related images, and its accuracy is the best that exists today.
Another very interesting feature is to filter the results by type of image, size, rights of use or date of publication. In addition, it offers good contextual results, since the images are linked to the website or blog where they have been published.