Earlier this month Google labs announced Google Goggles, a visual search application for Android phones. The app uses pictures instead of words to search the web for relevant results. Using your camera phone, you can snap a picture of anything and let Google analyze what it is you’re interested in. From landmarks, books, business cards, artwork, wine and logos to location-based business searches within your periphery, Google Goggles is one part mobile-scanner, one part augmented reality app.
Visual Search is still incredibly new, so the accuracy of the results sometimes suffers, especially when you depart from the clear and obvious categories of image searches defined by the development team. If you’re interested in mobile tech, SEO or SEM, please keep an eye on visual search as it’s likely to become extremely important as time goes on.
Currently, Google Goggles is only available for Android 1.6+ phones, but Google plans to release the app for other phones in the future.
Tags: Augmented Reality, Mobile, SEM, SEO