Google Powers Up Search For The Sake Of Art
- by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, May 31, 2017
An update to Google Search for art-related things now provides access to more relevant results and the ability to delve deeper into specific topics. An interactive panel will highlight the ways that people can explore the works and the artists.
A related update in Google Street View, also released Wednesday, allows art lovers to read annotations about paintings and zoom in on high-resolution images to gain insights about the artworks when taking a virtual tour.
The Google Arts & Culture team worked with Google Search engineers to develop the tools and improve how the engine understands and recognizes artwork. The feature works on desktop and in the Chrome browser on mobile.
The tools demonstrate the possibilities for marketers when it comes to search campaigns and the options to highlight content in 360-degree tours.
Google's Arts & Culture already has its own art browsing tool that includes a 360-degree virtual tour feature. The group also used its visual recognition software, which works similar to machine learning technology in Google Photos, which lets people search for images in their photo galleries, the software scans art collections of museums worldwide to identify and categorize more than 15,000 works.
Google estimates receiving 500 million art-related queries each month, which is why it's making some improvements to the search experience as well and likely why Vint Cerf, VP and chief Internet evangelist at Google, introduced a project between Google Arts & Culture and Rhizome.
The two companies have been working to preserve digital art. The company has developed tools that preserve digital artworks and allow them to be viewed long after their complex, software becomes obsolete.
