Google Image Swirl is a new Google Labs product that makes it easy for you to search related images on the Internet once you’ve identified a particular image to begin with. It uses the Wonder Wheel concept used in Google Search for searching related keywords. It uses the new computer vision research to cluster similar images into representative groups in an exploratory interface.
Google Image Swirl uses the latest technology developed for finding the similar images and for face recognition to ascertain how images should be grouped together. It builds hierarchies out of these groups to present the searched images in different groups. So when you search for an image at Google Image Swirl, the initial search results page will show thumbnails of representative groups of images with similar appearance and meaning. However, these searched images on the initial results page are not just the most relevant images but they are also the most relevant groups of images.
For example, when you search for “apple” at Google Image Swirl, you’ll see the following 12 representative groups of images:
Zoom it: click here or on the image to view enlarged image
Now, click on any of the images, and in the next page, you’ll notice a cluster of images “swirling” into view, showing images in the form of “wonder wheel” on the basis of the representative image selected by you; see the following figure (in this “wonder wheel” if you select another group image, you’ll get another group of images):
Zoom it: click here or on the image to view enlarged image
You can further explore additional subgroups within any cluster of images, to further refine your search. This will allow you to keep refining your image search to find similar images within the same group or the same subgroups, and so on.
Thus, instead of searching for an image in the normal Google Image Search, where random images will appear in the search results pages relating to the searched expression, you can better search at Google Image Swirl to directly search the required image from similar groups and subgroups. It makes your image search very easy and a fun too.
Google Image Swirl organizes image search results based on the visual and semantic similarities between images and presents them in an easy-to-understand interface. It requires JavaScript to be enabled and a Flash plugin to be installed on your computer. It works on Windows (Google Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Opera browsers), Linux (Chrome and Firefox), and Mac OS/X (Chrome, Safari, Firefox) operating systems.
At present, Google Image Swirl works for more than 200,000 queries, and more queries are likely to added in future. The available queries will start auto-completing when you start typing in the search box, similar to Google Suggest.
Give it a try to Google Image Swirl. You’ll like it.
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