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Google Launches A “Nicer” New Image Search

By | July 21, 2010 | Web Design Tutorials & Articles

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Google announced today on the official company blog that some major changes have been implemented in Google’s Image Search. Marissa Mayer, Google’s Vice President of Search, told the BBC that more than a billion image searches are now carried out each day on the site. That’s a lot of searching and the latest improvements are designed to make searching for images quicker and easier.

These changes include:

  • When a user clicks on a thumbnail they are taken to a landing page showing the large image in context. Once the use clicks outside the image they’re brought straight back to the original page.
  • Live enlargement of images as users roll their mouse over the thumbnails. The hover pane which appears gives a large preview and more information about the image and “similar images”.
  • A denser layout of images for easier viewing of many images at once.
  • Better navigation. Optimized keyboard navigation (Page Up / Page Down) for scrolling quickly through pages of images.
  • Instant scrolling between pages will allow users to get up to 1000 images in one scrolling page.

    • Other, not so exciting changes for the average image searcher will be the inclusion of thumbnail picture advertisements in Image Search. Google Image’s product manager Nate Smith said “for our advertisers, we’re launching a new ad format called Image Search Ads. These ads appear only on Google Images, and they let you include a thumbnail image alongside your lines of text”.

    GoogleImageSearch

    The upgrades to Image Search will kick in worldwide over the next few days. (Note at the time of writing, the changes weren’t visible from Ireland, hence the use of the official Google Blog image)

    Read more on the Google Blog and on the BBC.

    Have you used the new Image Search yet? Do you like the changes?

    Jennifer Farley

    Jennifer Farley is a designer, illustrator and design instructor based in Ireland. She writes about design and illustration on her blog at Laughing Lion Design.

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    Tagged as: images, Web Design Tutorials & Articles

    { 20 comments }

    Anonymous August 18, 2010 at 9:20 pm

    it suuuuuuuuuuuuuuucks how do i get the old version back?

    Simon August 11, 2010 at 1:57 am

    I have been using it since they implemented the new layout and I find the interface cumbersome. If your mouse isn’t off the side of the main image pane the thumbnails keep zooming in, distracting me and covering up other thumbnails. All the details are hidden until you mouse over the item. When you do click on a thumbnail, the pic floating over the host page would be an improvement on the original design but it seems to be sized randomly, particularly if it is a large image, and sometimes the pic displayed winds up smaller than it’s thumbnail. On the sites that have security measures in place to stop remote links the service doesn’t work at all. All in all, I don’t know how you screw up a number 1 rated service so badly.

    TAd August 9, 2010 at 1:29 pm

    I do not care for lightbox, perhaps that is why I cant stand the new search.

    Lightbox, like other “fad” tools, is WAY overused.

    wtf August 4, 2010 at 8:21 am

    i hate it

    Joel Walker July 31, 2010 at 11:22 am

    I like it. A lightbox is a big improvement over frames.

    Astrolounge July 29, 2010 at 1:20 pm

    I despise it. It doesn’t tell you what site an image is from unless you mouse over it, and then you have to wait a second for it to pop up. It’s not a long wait, but it’s an unnecessary wait. It’s savagely inefficient, and I can’t stand it. They should put it back, or at least include an option to revert it to it’s old layout.

    scotthoff July 29, 2010 at 3:25 am

    I like it.

    Monica July 29, 2010 at 1:01 am

    Absolutely loathe it. When I got the new image view at work, I thought – hoped – it was just a quirk and not a major change.

    No easy view of image size, no easy way to see the url/source (particularly important with so many suspect sites!), no easy text referencing. If I had time to hover and click for more info, I’d use the web search for images, not the image search.

    And waaaay too many images on one page.

    Absolutely hate it.

    Why oh why doing I.T. people insist on fixing things that are not broken?

    Patrick July 26, 2010 at 11:55 am

    Hate it. Google needs to learn the old saw, “If it ain’t broke don’t fix it.” Also the inverse; if it is broke, -do- fix it… for instance, lat/long haven’t displayed properly on Google Maps for several years now.

    David July 26, 2010 at 7:37 am

    visit http://www.petitiononline.com/googled/ to sign a petition against this new image search interface.

    WFTAge July 23, 2010 at 7:35 am

    Hello.
    Yes, Google New Tech For Showing Images in july 2010.
    Nice Tech

    Doug July 23, 2010 at 5:32 am

    I cannot stand this – you can’t get information about the images unless you hover over each and every one. How is that helpful?

    Kirst_85 July 22, 2010 at 5:10 pm

    I have used the new image search in South Africa. The only thing I like about this is the “Instant scrolling between pages will allow users to get up to 1000 images in one scrolling page.” The rest of it I hate. The images all crammed so close together looks really messy and is distracting. The landing page and rollover enlargement are also irritating as hell. I wish I could have the old layout with more scrolling but thats about it.

    Anil July 22, 2010 at 4:59 pm

    Looks really cool. It would be great if Google applies similar kind of stuff for showing web results

    Anonymously Name July 22, 2010 at 11:00 am

    Straight piece of shit..

    I used to filter some images through the URL’s and now there’s no URL so we’re clicking on a blind link.. Which will end up leading to malware stuff and others..

    Once again.. Google, stop doing shit because you’re getting load of $$$.
    Go invent something instead of changing what’s already good enough.

    Stormwatch July 22, 2010 at 9:12 am

    Are they insane? This new design is atrocious. At one fell swoop, Google made a great tool slower, uglier, and harder to use!

    Wardrop July 22, 2010 at 8:10 am

    Finally, they’ve stopped using frames.

    deathshadow60 July 22, 2010 at 7:02 am

    .. and so it begins, google starts applying the javascripted ajax bull they’ve been using everywhere else to their search… Lands sake did NOBODY learn the lesson of “ASK”?

    First bullet point sounds like lightbox – I HATE lightbox, every time I come across it I scream “Oh for **** sake just let me open the damned image!”

    Next one sounds like either a waste of bandwidth from precaching, or a waste of time waiting for ajax to load the hover state in the background — or a waste of time sending thumbnails larger than needed… Key phrase here?

    Then of course there’s the “denser layout” — apparently from the screenshot removing information I usually care about before I go after the image like file size and dimensions… Of course that will probably be a tooltip hover state wasting my time moving the mouse over every blasted thumbnail instead of being able to see it at a glance.

    Keyboard navigation — making it not behave like normal pages thanks to it’s ajax bullshit. GREAT.

    Willing to bet this new navigation probably breaks the forward/back buttons in the process, as well as probably direct linking a results page, flip navigation and of course middle-clicking. Why not, it’s what the ajax for nothing crap did to all the webmail services.

    … and the final one, THOUSANDS? Do I even want to THINK about how long that’s going to take to load at 250-300ms real-world per file request?

    We’ll wait and see, but really this does NOT bode well in my mind…

    ferrari_chris July 22, 2010 at 6:34 am

    I just checked my local Google.co.nz and there’s no change, then I checked Google.com as well and the old image search is still there too.

    I’ll just have to wait for the roll-out I guess.

    GonzaloGM July 22, 2010 at 5:27 am

    I love it. I love the infinite scroll and that most useless details were left out (except the size, which can be optionally shown at a corner of the image) to give more room for images. Efficient.

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