Google updating Image Search over the next few days, promises faster results

Google Image Search is about to under go another change, with the company announcing that it will be rolling out a new update over the next few days. While the update will provide multiple changes, the biggest one of relevance to the everyday Internet surfer is faster speeds with less clicking. After the update, web surfers will be presented images via an inline panel.

The inline panel, which you can see on the image above, will display both the image and its associated meta data, making it easier to take in all the details about an image without any unnecessary clicks. The changes are said to be the result of feedback from both users and webmasters, and aim to solve complaints that exist about the current Image Search. Aside from the design changes, users will also experience a couple other changes.

Navigation itself will be faster, with Google saying that users will be able to scroll through the image results using the keyboard, as well as using it to return to other results. Viewing images will be faster due to the elimination of using an iframe to display image details, which is how it is currently done. In addition to making the entire process faster, this also lessens the load on the hosting website’s servers.

The inline panel will display a total of four links, with users now being presented with a link to both the domain name of the website where the image is found and the specific link to the image. According to Google, this has resulted in a click-through rate increase for hosting websites. There’s no specific date for when the changes will take place, only that it will happen sometime by the end of the week.

[via Google Webmaster Central]