google image search: search similar images

Question

Hi,

I want to write a mobile app which takes a picture and searches google images for similar pictures and then displays the results.

However, with google image search I can only search for text strings, and with the search API it seems there's no possibility to search for similar pictures; this feature seems to be available only through the web interface.

Any idea how I can solve this problem?

thanks, Christoph

Answer 1

I don't think it's possible. If you click the link to find similar images from the images result page you get a link with the original query included:

google.com/images?q=ORIGINAL_QUERY&imgtype=i_similar&sa=...

If you remove that GET param manually, the search does not work, it only shows the images search form.

I dont think it is possible to find similar images with google if you do not know what's on it.