Search company Google is in the process of updating the results pages of its image search section to add icons that indicate the type of content images are leading to.
Images that appear within these search results page will now display an icon stating whether the image has come from a recipe, video or product pag,e and each of these categories will be highlighted with a different tag.
Google’s Search Liaison, Danny Sullivan shared an example on Twitter as part of a thread of messages on Tuesday:
Later this week, Google Images will show new icons on desktop that provide useful information to indicate if images lead to pages with products for sale, recipes or video content. Mousing-over icons expands them to show the icons with text or length of video…. pic.twitter.com/RrbGnk27iq
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) February 25, 2020
The example shows that when a user hovers their mouse over the tag, it will expand to show text or display the length of a video. Sullivan explains that the change will be rolling out this week to the desktop version of Google Images.
Prior to these tags appearing on the images, Google used to display an image’s dimensions in the same place. Instead of adding this feature elsewhere on the image, it will simply be removed. If a user wants to see the dimensions of an image, they must click on the image and the details will appear within the box that opens once it has been selected.
Google has said that this update will help users to find more visual ideas and get more done from the image thumbnail. Sullivan has reminded site owners that the company is still beta testing the capability to show image licensing details within the search results.
Last week, the company announced that it would begin testing the licensing feature, which would see the search engine pull through this information from a web page’s structured data. More information about this and how to mark up a licensable image with appropriate structured data can be seen here.
Should this change be a success, then Google expects that more clicks to the images will be completed by engaged users which will hopefully drive more traffic to a website. To find out how to bring more traffic and enquiries to your website, contact the team at Engage Web.
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[…] February, the search engine began testing a licensable badge. Following work with the Center of the Picture […]