Pinterest has launched a brand new integration for its Chrome browser extension. The extension is a reflection of all the work done with regards to visual search and will allow you to hover your mouse over any image and find related ideas and products. The most interesting part is the fact that the extension cam be used anywhere on the web and not just on Pinterest.
So here is how it works: You see a product you like but would like to look at some options, if possible. Simply hover your mouse over it and deploy the Pinterest extension to come up with a lot of similar products. The feature is currently available only for Google Chrome and to use it there, you must first install a browser extension.
The company said that its visual search tech was capable of pinpointing specific objects,products, patterns and colors in an image and then returning with similar products.
The extension is available exclusively for Google Chrome, although Pinterest said that it was working upon supporting other browsers as well. Meanwhile, in case you are wondering what the fuss is about, since we already have visual search by Google: Pinterest’s take is quite different from Google’s approach.
See, what Google does when you pop an image into its reverse image search, involves hunting through all the vast depths of the Internet to find out images similar to the one you are holding. This system however, already knows pretty much the exact location of the images. Why? Because, the images are already stored somewhere on Pinterest and clicking on one of the suggested pictures takes you straight back to the platform, which just happens to house the pictures as well.
You could of course, have achieved similar results with saving the image and then pumping it into Pinterest’s built-in visual search feature. However, this way is faster and avoids a couple of steps. Interestingly, you can also perform a page search (i.e. search for a page that looks similar to this one) by right clicking on the page background and choosing search.
You can access visual search by visiting the Pinterest browser button for Chrome.
