Google adds Google Lens button to home page search box

Google has added the Google Lens button to the Google home page, by the search box. Google Lens allows you to search by uploading a photo to Google Search and then Google matches visually similar search results for you.

What it looks like. Here is a screenshot of the Google Lens button on the Google home page for desktop:

Mobile. Well, Google had the Google Lens button on mobile for a while, but has now added it to the desktop Google.com home page.

Announcement. Google’s VP of Engineering, Rajan Patel, posted about this on Twitter. He wrote “The Google homepage doesn’t change often, but today it did. We’re always working to expand the kinds of questions you can ask and improving how we answer them. Now you can ask visual questions easily from your desktop.”

Why we care. This may lead to more visual searches and thus different types of traffic to your images and content. Like Rajan said, Google doesn’t often change its home page and today it did. Google Lens is a really magical search feature that we should likely all use more often.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry can be followed on Twitter here.