Pinterest has an ambitious visual search strategy, which has produced tools such as Shop the Look, which lets users select blue dots within a pin to find similar products, and Lens, a real-time visual search tool embedded in the camera of the Pinterest App (and elsewhere). Pinterest’s bet on visual search has paid dividends, with searches on Lens increasing 140% between February 2017-2018.
Pinterest rolled out its first visual search tools in 2015, which actually followed early tools by Google and Amazon. Over the past two years, both companies quietly continued to develop their image recognition technology and have released major new visual search tools.
Google notably released Google Lens in 2017. This general visual search engine can analyze and return results for images ranging from products to landmarks to dog breeds. It’s now embedded in the camera, Google Assistant and Google Photos apps of many Android smartphones. The update also introduced real-time results within the camera, style match that suggests similar products, and smart text selection, which gives users the ability to save and even translate text from images or the real world. Read the rest at eMarketer.
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