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Visual and voice search

| Article: 2 min read | Store pages

Visual search is search by image: a shopper photographs an item or uploads a picture, and the system finds similar products. Voice search is a query by voice instead of text. For a store this means a product has to be recognized both from a photo and from a spoken phrase.

What is known about the scale

The latest figure from a Google source: Google Lens handles almost 20 billion visual queries a month, and Google gave this number in October 2024. There is no newer figure in the primary source. Lens uses Google's Shopping Graph (over 45 billion products) to recognize an item in a photo, and shows prices across different stores, reviews and where to buy (Google, October 2024). In the same post Google described a voice question about a photo and a video query; at the time they were available only in English. Check in the app whether they work in Ukrainian now.

There is no recent data on the share of voice purchases.

What depends on you

Google's visual search runs on the same data as ordinary search:

  • Google Lens uses structured image data where it exists; images from Google Merchant Center also reach Google Images (Google Search Central). Google does not guarantee they will be shown.
  • Nothing separate has to be done for "Lens": clean product photos, structured data, a connected Merchant Center and a page that matches the photo.
  • For AI-generated images, keep the metadata (photos and video).

Visual search on your own site

A visual search of your own (upload a photo and find similar items) makes sense where a product is hard to describe in words: furniture, clothing, decor, spare parts. It is a separate project that requires a quality catalog with attributes. There is no recent independent data on its effect on conversion in stores. Start with site search: if text search works badly, visual search will not fix it.

The practical side: people phrase voice queries as questions. This makes pages that answer directly useful ("will this filter fit model X"). This is a conclusion from the logic of queries, not from a study.

Common mistakes

  • Buying an expensive visual search module with a weak catalog.
  • Photos on a lifestyle background without a clean shot of the product.
  • Not checking how the product looks in Google Images results.
  • Relying on old figures about voice search.

FAQ

What is visual search? Search by image. Google Lens is the best-known example: you photograph an item and see where to buy it.

Do you need to optimize a store for Google Lens? There are no separate settings. Quality images, structured data and Merchant Center help.

Is voice search popular for shopping? There is no recent reliable data.

Sources

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