I decided to review what I believe is a helpful and little known feature search engines like Google and Bing incorporate in their services. Searches can be performed not on text only, but also on images of all kinds. I stumbled on this feature not even a year ago and have quickly learned its usefulness. What surprised me even more was that the amount of people that also knew about the feature and used it were little to none.
Image Searching was introduced by Google in 2011. Simply drag an image or cut and paste an image URL into the search box and the powerhouse search engine will recognize the image and send the user relevant results. Once accustomed to this feature it can be both useful and insightful. Searching an old photo could reveal information of its origins, from the date and time it was taken to any supplementary articles that used it. Apart from relevant info gained from searching an image it also helps in finding different versions (smaller, larger, clearer, etc.) of the picture or even related images. Searching this way can lead to sources of information or leisurely enjoyment not found with searching by text.
Bing has just recently updated their image searching software by finally supporting image matches in searches. This feature works the way Google's does by matching an image you found with other similar images of varying sizes and resolutions. I tested the feature with several different images and found that it worked well. Some images didn't offer the option to image match but for the most part it is a good addition to Microsoft's search engine. I still myself prefer Google's version to Bing but both are definitely done well in both approach and results yield.
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