Do you know about Google’s new image search option? I recently stumbled upon it quite by accident, and I think it’s just about the coolest thing on the web since Pinterest. It allows you to drag and drop images into the Google search bar and search for items from an actual image. You can also input a URL of an image or upload your own image. Isn’t that incredible? My mind was blown.

It’s built into your browser if you use Google Chrome, but there are also plug-ins you can download for Firefox or Chrome to make the searching process even easier. Read about it here.*

Anyway, how is this relevant or helpful at all? I can think of a few applications:

I don’t know about you, but I am constantly frustrated when I discover an image of a great product/idea/recipe via Pinterest or other website, but when I click through, find that the link no longer works or doesn’t go directly to the image source. Instead of having to scroll through decades of old blog posts or having to search through a store’s catalog for the product, I can now drag and drop the image into Google and it will bring up all the places where that image was posted, usually listing the original source first.

Have you ever seen a piece of art that you like in a photo, but can’t identify the artist? Or maybe you’ve come across a piece of architecture, but you can’t quite place your finger on who the architect was? Or better yet, you’re looking through your summer vacation photos from last year and can’t remember the name of that cathedral you visited in Germany? Well, now you can. And like I mentioned earlier, you can even upload images from your own computer to Google’s image search and it will find identify that artist/architect/cathedral for you. Cool, huh?

This is pretty self-explanatory, but if you ever need to find a different-sized version of a particular image, this is the way to do it.

When Google provides search results for your image, it will also provide you with similar images at the bottom of your search results. This means if you’re looking for mint-colored pictures to fill up your minty inspiration board, Google can find those images for you. It can even do more complicated images with several colors or combinations of colors and shapes.

Isn’t that neat? Or am I just the last one to jump on the bandwagon (as I was for Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram…)? How have you been using Google’s Image Search?

*Please note that this is not a sponsored post in any way. I’ve simply used and loved Google Image Search and wanted to share it with you, my dear readers!