Like.com Unveils a Visual Search Engine

The search company Riya today launches its visual search engine Like.com, based on appearance in addition to text. The Like engine is particularly apt at finding consumer products that provide, as ZDNet describes, “visual similarity shopping.” Riya found product hunting was a more popular application of their technology among users than facial recognition search, which they tested on MySpace.

TechCrunch, which illustrates the ease of finding a similar watch to Ms. Paris Hilton simply by searching with a cropped image of her watch, hails Like.com as the ‘first real visual search engine.’ It’s a direction that can only grow– according to Riya, current keyword-based image search accounts for only 8% of queries. Though a number of big players have expressed research interest in visual search, the going has been hard, and Like.com is in many ways ‘the first’ to pull together an engine ready for prime time.