Sunday, September 4, 2011

Google "Drag-N-Drop" Image Search

Somebody posted about this feature on G+ that I had never heard of...Google's Drag-N-Drop Image Search. I immediately thought "What a great frickin idea"!
So I went to the URL to try it out. The first thing I did was to try to D-N-D an image from another website...SUCCESS! I dragged my LinkedIn profile photo into the search bar and got the following results:

Headshot Drag-N-Drop Search

It showed links to my G+ profile (with the same photo) and three other profiles that I have in my circles. The really funny part is that it also served up a grid of head shots of bald or balding guys in suits from around the web.


I tried several other photos, but didn't get great results...a picture with some wood-grain prominent in it resulted in pictures with lots of wood-grain; Ones with a dominant color resulted in pictures with that dominant color present AND dominant; A picture with one of my daughters and me sitting on a bench resulted in picture of either multiple people or people sitting down. All in all, fairly interesting. 

I finally decided to try using one of the pictures from my travels, choosing one of a castle I visited in Scotland, but had forgotten the name of. I got the results listed below:

Fyvie Castle Drag-N-Drop Image Search

Not only did it find similar pictures, it also reminded me which castle it was with a couple of thumbnails from just about the exact perspective from my picture.

I can see where this can help you if you are trying to find similar pictures to one you have already, say for a project, or if you think someone may be using your photographs without your permission on the web.

I like the tool, but it would be nice if they could come up with a way to refine how it searches for the images you drag-N-drop onto the search bar. 

Let me know what you think about it...