Google Images searches are about to become much more useful thanks to integration with the company’s Knowledge Graph. The goal of the recently-reported move, according to Google, is to ensure users are easily able to “explore beyond the image itself.”
For clarity, Knowledge Graph is something that most users should already be aware of. It shows up in just about every other aspect of the company’s search results. Most commonly, Knowledge Graph is seen when users search for a topic such as a song, movie, or famous person. But it also makes an appearance in searches related to shopping and more.
Now, similar results will be shown for searches in Google Images.
So what are the benefits of Knowledge Graph for Google Images?
Summarily, Knowledge Graph is a pool of contextually-relevant information and other details about a given topic. Here, that’s going to be put to use to serve images.
What that means from an end-user perspective will vary based on what’s been searched. But the gist of the matter is that users will now be given extra details and contextual information for some image searches.
For Google Images, as with other searches, Knowledge Graph information will be limited to certain types of searches. That won’t necessarily make the feature any less useful.
The database behind the feature is comprised of ‘billions of facts’ and will work similarly to Google Lens AI when it comes to surfacing information, according to the search giant. And it will work with people, places and things.
Google provides two examples to highlight that.
If a user is searching for a state park to visit, users can tap on images related to the park and see information about what’s in the images. For instance, it might show the name of a river, where the park is located, and more. Topics associated with those details will be displayed as well, to provide deeper context to the image itself.
Similar results will show on searches for home renovation or art project images, as another example. For instance, users might discover information related to architecture and architects.
Where and when is this available?
By all accounts, Google users should already be seeing this feature coming online. The feature is said to be arriving within the week. So this isn’t a slow rollout either. But that doesn’t mean it’s arriving for just everybody all at once.
The initial launch appears to be geared toward mobile users first and it only appears to be shipping to the US. That’s not surprising since adding contextual information across the battery of online images is going to be a monumental task. Even if that’s limited to certain types of images.