Tocquigny - A Measured Approach

Google Images: Bigger, Better, and Faster

Posted 08.09.2010 by Hiliary Kolb

If you're anything like me, you're probably using Google Images at least once a day. Is that plant poison ivy? What's the difference between shovelhead and hammerhead sharks? What 1960s celebrity haircut do I want to copy when I go to my next hair stylist appointment? Okay, maybe that last one doesn't apply to everyone.

Recently, Google changed the game. Not only did Google launch Image Search Ads, ads that will appear only on Google Images and allow you to include a thumbnail image alongside your lines of text, but Google has also changed the way you can search for images.

According to the Google Blog, a few of the main changes to the design are:

• Dense tiled layout designed to make it easy to look at lots of images at once. We want to get the app out of the way so you can find what you’re really looking for.
• Instant scrolling between pages, without letting you get lost in the images. You can now get up to 1,000 images, all in one scrolling page. And we’ll show small, unobtrusive page numbers so you don’t lose track of where you are.
• Larger thumbnail previews on the results page, designed for modern browsers and high-res screens.
• A hover pane that appears when you mouse over a given thumbnail image, giving you a larger preview, more info about the image and other image-specific features such as “Similar images.”
• Once you click on an image, you’re taken to a new landing page that displays a large image in context, with the website it’s hosted on visible right behind it. Click anywhere outside the image, and you’re right in the original page where you can learn more about the source and context.
• Optimized keyboard navigation for faster scrolling through many pages, taking advantage of standard web keyboard shortcuts such as Page Up / Page Down. It’s all about getting you to the info you need quickly, so you can get on with actually building that treehouse or buying those flowers.

All these upgrades are part of a master plan to make it easier to search for images and create a better user experience. Perhaps, it's also part of an underlying plan to keep the Microsoft/Yahoo supergroup from taking a bigger bite out of Google's market share when Microsoft takes over the ad system for both search engines this fall. Whatever the reason, I'm happy to take advantage. With this upgrade, daydreaming of a Cinque Terre vacation just got a whole lot cooler.

Next Post  |  Previous Post