But there’s more on the horizon. At Google I/O 2022, the tech giant previewed the latest enhancements to Google Search, namely Multisearch Near Me and Scene Exploration.
Multisearch Near Me build on top of Multisearch – a feature launched in April allowing you to combine multiple input types in a single query. Think pointing Google Lens at a dress to take a photo of it and typing “green” to find the same design in a different color.
As you can probably tell, Multisearch Near Me filters results you can find or purchase nearby. Just add “near me” to your query to take advantage of this ability.
The mouth-watering example shown at Google I/O included a picture of a tasty-looking dish found online. Google’s tech was not only shown identifying the dish (Japchae, if you’re curious), but also flagging nearby restaurants serving it.
Multisearch Near Me will be available globally this year in English. Support for more languages will be added over time.
We recently launched multisearch in the Google app, which lets you search by taking a photo and asking a question at the same time. Later this year, you’ll be able to take a picture or screenshot and add “near me” to get local results. #GoogleIOpic.twitter.com/F2kl0m9nYt
— Google (@Google) May 11, 2022
In other Search news, Google previewed Scene Exploration – an extension of Multisearch able to, you guessed it, handle queries across anything you pan your camera across.
Example time: let’s say you’re looking for a chocolate bar for a picky friend, but there’s a gazillion options on the shelf in front of you. Scene Exploration was shown highlighting the bars meeting a list of criteria (dark chocolate and nut-free) and even overlaying product ratings in the image. Neat!
Both Multisearch Near Me and Scene Exploration are part of Google’s efforts to make searching more natural, effortless, accessible, and powerful. With over 8 billion queries handled by Google Lens alone – a 3x increase vs last year – we can only see Google’s search capabilities becoming more and more integrated in daily life over time.
Scene Exploration in action, shown at Google IO 2022
