Benefits of Reverse Image Search for E-commerce Businesses
By Sam Nguyen
AI has been finding its applications everywhere. The web search landscape has also leveraged the effectiveness of AI in multiple ways to ensure optimum user experience (UX) for people who perform web searches to find their desired content. Search engines use AI algorithms to crawl the web and review content posted on various web pages to determine relevancy, index them, and rank those pages on SERPs accordingly.
This practice has helped search engines enhance UX significantly. Additionally, introducing the voice search method that uses machine learning, the subordinate of AI, has made web searches easier for average users as they can easily perform web searches using voice commands instead of typing queries. However, the reverse image search method is the most groundbreaking application of AI and its subordinates in the web search landscape.
As the name suggests, this method is purposefully devised to help users search visual content online easily. Finding images using text or even voice search could be an uphill task. Especially when you know little about the image or visually similar results they are looking for online. Conversely, the reverse picture search method can make the process much easier and help them find their required visually similar results easily.
This method helps common web users and benefits e-commerce businesses in various ways. This article sheds light on all these benefits. Additionally, it will discuss everything you need to know about the reverse image search method. Read on to learn more.
What is the Reverse Image Search Method?
Before we discuss the benefits of reverse image search tools for ecommerce businesses, it is essential to go through the basic definition of the reverse picture search method. Moreover, it is necessary to understand the method of using a reverse picture search tool and the background working of such a tool. So, the reverse image method involves the process of searching visually similar results online. It requires users to use a reference image as a search query to find various visually relevant search results online.
This method uses an advanced algorithm named CBIR (Content-Based Image Retrieval). This smart algorithm uses AI and its subsets, including machine learning and computer vision, to help users find images featuring similar content, patterns, or palettes. The working of the CBIR algorithm in the background of the reverse image search method can be divided into 4 phases. These phases are Analysis, Segmentation, Identification, and Search. Further details about these phases are given below.
- Analysis
This phase involves the use of computer vision. CBIR uses this subset of AI to scan and analyze the content featured by an image. The image analysis phase helps CBIR take note of colors, patterns, or objects featured by the search query.
- Segmentation
Once the image analysis process is accomplished, the CBIR algorithm uses AI to segment the image used as a search query. During this process, the image is divided into numbered arrays of pixels and necessary data is retrieved.
- Identification
This phase plays a key role in helping the CBIR algorithm deliver nearly accurate visually similar search results. The data retrieved from the segmentation phase is processed during the identification phase, and the content featured in it is identified using machine learning.
- Search
It is the final phase of the reverse image search method powered by the CBIR algorithm. This phase doesn’t use AI or its subsets. Instead, it grabs data processed by its predecessors and generates keywords to perform web searches and find visually similar results online.
Why is Reverse Image Search Beneficial for E-commerce Business?
After going through the working and usage of the reverse picture search method, it is evident that it can help you easily find accurate, visually similar research results. As mentioned earlier, this method could be highly beneficial for ecommerce businesses. However, many people don’t understand its various benefits for such businesses and the ecommerce industry as a whole. This section looks at how ecommerce businesses benefit from the reverse image search method. Further details are given below.
- Security of Intellectual Assets
Various ecommerce businesses spend significant money to click high-quality product images and articulate illustrations. They use it to promote their brand and its products and effectively reach the targeted audience. These clicks and illustrations are their intellectual assets, and no one else is allowed to use such graphics without the consent of the ecommerce business that is the author of these graphics.
However, various entities try to make unauthorized use of graphics that are intellectual assets of another brand. This phenomenon not only leads to reduced traffic coming to the author’s ecommerce website but also results in various other problems. The best way to avoid this issue is to use the reverse image search method to spot black hat usage of graphics. Once identified, authors can work on various practices to prevent other entities from using their intellectual assets and ensure their exclusive usage.
- Competitor Analysis
The ecommerce industry has seen a swift augmentation lately, with many established businesses and multiple others stepping into this domain. This phenomenon makes it a highly competitive landscape. The existence of a huge number of already established businesses can make it challenging for startups and newly launched stores to make their mark in the already competitive market. Startups and newly launched businesses must use proper planning to achieve success in the ecommerce industry.
It is only possible when a particular ecommerce startup is well aware of its competitors and their products. The image search technique could be a perfect way to monitor competitors’ products, presentation, and performance. Businesses can perform reverse image searches using product photos and discover the pricing offered by their competitors. Additionally, it can also help them present their products more effectively. Simply put, the image search method can be highly effective in competitor analysis.
- Easier Product Discovery
Ask yourself a question: what would an ecommerce business want? The obvious answer to the aforementioned question would be a higher chunk of traffic, so how would an e-commerce business grab the attention of targeted consumers? The answer is making their products highly discoverable by the audience. Now, you may ask, how would it be possible? The answer is search optimization of the images to make them easily discoverable by the targeted audience through reverse image searches.
E-commerce businesses wanting to drive more website traffic should optimise images by ensuring proper descriptions with highly relevant keywords. In addition, product images should be posted with proper ALT text and descriptive image file names. This practice would make it easier for web crawlers to understand the relevancy of images. Hence, images will be indexed accordingly and more discoverable by consumers searching for similar products online.
- Enhanced Revenue
It is worth mentioning that most people searching for a specific product using images referring to it are classified as pre-qualified leads. Such consumers are already interested in buying a specific product; all they look for is the right deal capable of compelling them to purchase. If you manage to drive such consumers to your website, it means they already like your product and want to purchase it from you. The best part is they will land on the product page directly.
It means they won’t have to browse your website or perform a search on it to find their desired products. This phenomenon will make it easier for them to purchase products. Visitors who are pre-qualified leads won’t take much time to purchase products and become successful converts, adding to the revenue of a particular e-commerce business. Hence, the reverse picture search method can be a perfect tool for an ecommerce business to get pre-qualified leads, make conversions, and enhance revenue.
- User-Generated Visual Content
Ecommerce businesses should put their efforts into encouraging consumers to upload images using products they offer and specifying a particular platform to share such content online. It goes without saying that the targeted audience can be effectively converted into leads by displaying user-generated content. People who are already interested in buying specific products will likely make a purchase when they see others enjoying the same merchandise.
Ecommerce businesses can upload user-generated images on specified web pages and social media platforms where the targeted audience can easily discover such content through image search. This phenomenon will help ecommerce businesses compel pre-qualified leads to decide and purchase the products they offer. Moreover, they can also post such content on their website and affiliate with their brand to influence the purchase decisions of the targeted audience.
How to Perform Reverse Image Searches?
After discussing various benefits of the reverse image search method for e-commerce businesses, it is time to uncover various highly effective tools that are usable for image search purposes. Further details about these tools are given below.
- Google Images
Let’s accept it: the first name that comes to mind when we think of web search is Google. It is considered the pioneer of the web search landscape. This search engine platform holds over 90% of the entire market share. Around 8.5 billion web searches are performed daily on Google. This humongous figure is enough to reflect Google’s dominance. This platform also offers its specific platform to help netizens perform reverse image searches and find their desired images online.
The name of this platform is Google Images. Users can access it to perform reverse picture searches and dig through Google’s mammoth database to find their desired images. However, it is worth mentioning that despite a humongous database, this platform may fail to ensure 100% accurate results. The reason behind this phenomenon is the algorithm’s inefficiency and indexation issues. Chances are that you may miss out on a few valuable image search results while relying on Google Images only.
- Reverse Image Search by SmallSEOTools.com
SmallSEOTools.com is a popular online platform mostly known for its various highly useful online tools capable of helping netizens perform their everyday tasks easily. This renowned online platform also offers a highly efficient image search tool. The great thing about the reverse image search tool SmallSEOTools.com is its ability to help users get visually similar search results from various platforms in one go.
This phenomenon would help them save plenty of time and effort that would otherwise go into the process of performing reverse image searches individually on all platforms. Users can easily view results from all search platforms, including Google, Baidu, Yandex, and Bing. Hence, chances of missing out on a worth-noticing reverse picture search result would be limited. The good news is that SmallSEOTools.com offers this tool for free. It also allows them to search using a specific image, keyword, and URL.
- DupliChecker’s Image Search tool
While the reverse image search method makes it easier for customers and businesses to find visually similar images online, no search-engine administered utility ensures 100% accurate results. Whether you talk about one offered by Google or those offered by other renowned templates, including Yandex, Bing, and Baidu. Such utilities will likely miss out on a few valuable image search results. Performing image searches on individual utilities one by one could be an uphill task.
Considering the aforementioned issue, you need an effective utility capable of displaying results from all platforms in one go. A few online platforms offer reverse picture search utilities, and DupliChecker.com reverse image search tool is one of them. You can perform free image searches through this tool online and get results from all renowned search platforms in one go. In addition, it also helps you perform photo searches using various inputs, including text query, image upload, and URL input.
Putting it Together
The reverse image search method is a groundbreaking innovation that played a key part in making it easier for average web users to find their desired images online. However, it is worth mentioning that this method is beneficial for netizens and for ecommerce businesses in various ways. We have discussed its benefits for ecommerce businesses in detail. We have also discussed various tools that can help you get accurate reverse image search results. Hopefully, you will find this article helpful and have plenty of takeaways!
