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Google's John Mueller said last night that bigger changes are coming to Google Image search this coming year. Instead of thinking of how to optimize for images like you have been for the past two decades, you will need to think differently about image search when these changes role out.
He said image search is going to be a bigger topic in 2019. He said no longer are people going to just be searching for images to include in their presentations. Instead, people will be using image search for more transactional, more educational, more search related tasks - unlike before.
It was not clear exactly what he meant but it seems like Google may be doing a bigger push towards image search. Maybe Google Lens features? Maybe showing more images that help people accomplish tasks. I am not fully sure.
Here is my tweet from when John said this:
Images in general are going to be a bigger topic this year. Think more how people might be searching to find your images. Not just for searching for images for presentations. Says @JohnMu
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) January 24, 2019
Again, this doesn't tell the whole story - so I will try to get more details for you all.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
Update: More from John on this:
There's nothing specific to announce from my side -- it's just a general observation that images are (once again) gaining importance overall on the web, and a reminder to think of them as a way of enabling users to find your content through Google Images / image search.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) January 25, 2019
