Google Updates Image Search with Colored Filter Buttons

After many rounds of testing, Google rolled out a new feature of Image Search that introduces colored filter buttons on desktop image searches. Previously they had tested this feature on mobile devices, but have since extended it to desktop searches. Now when you use image search to find a query, you will see colored buttons that allow you to filter your results by category, colors, and so on. For some queries the colored buttons are categorized as well.

As you’ll notice in the screenshot, color filters are a shade of green, musical artists in blue, and other brands in purple. There you go again, Google, trying to make my life easier.

Google desktop search for Beats headphones

Stop me if you’ve seen this before.

If you’ve ever used Pinterest, like the vast majority of millennials, and, dare I say, just about anyone with a mobile phone, you’re undoubtedly familiar with this concept. Pinterest has been allowing you to further filter your search by choosing these colored buttons for quite some time.

Pinterest desktop search for Beats headphones

Obviously Pinterest got something right with this one, enough for the largest search engine in the world to take notice and borrow the concept. So hat tip to you, Pinterest! *humble brag alert* I’ve been on board since 2011, which at the time was an unpopular thing to admit, but I digress.

This is definitely a helpful feature for users, and I’m glad to see it rolled out on desktop and mobile devices. Now for my professional opinion on the matter – from an SEO standpoint, this feature should help your website improve click-through rate on image results relevant to your brand, as these filters inherently help users single out a specific image they may have been looking for in a sea of thousands of images.