Regardless of the industry or the size of your business, establishing an online presence can be challenging.
The internet is substantially oversaturated with companies vying for consumer attention, which means finding your place in the competition is tough.
However, there are various tools available concerning the potential for online visibility, and Google’s advanced image search is a powerful one.
Often overlooked by business owners and professional marketers alike, it is one of the best ways to research the methods your competitors use to roll out their visual marketing strategies.
Ready to know more? This is what this blog post will cover:
What is Google Advanced Image Search?
Utilizing a general Google image search to keep tabs on the competition is daunting and tedious at best.
Anyone who has ever tried to search for a specific image on Google, which is pretty much all of us, knows the pain of scrolling through thousands of images while trying to find what we want.
Putting Google’s advanced image search to use is the fastest way to locate the information you’re looking for, without wasting hours of precious time.
Essentially, this little-known search tool is a true marketing team dream, as it provides complete control over which images pop up in your search through the use of specific image filter settings.
By targeting and streamlining your image search, you can say goodbye to irrelevancy, and hello to the perfect way to sneak a peek at the inner workings of competitive visual marketing strategies.
Why Use Google Advanced Image Search for Competitive Research?
When it comes to succeeding online, you can never do enough competitive research.
The competition is always evolving and growing.
By regularly implementing every tool you have in your research arsenal, you can stop falling behind and consistently stay ahead.
Identifying Competing Brands
It’s likely impossible for you to sniff out every last competitor you have in the business world, but you can come pretty close!
Google’s advanced image search allows you to find direct competition through their content, presenting you with the opportunity to analyze and compare it to your own strategies.
Understanding competition is a necessity for the way you execute your business as a whole.
By finding and studying the images, infographics and ebooks presented to consumers from your direct competition, you can be inspired for future visual communications and content ideas.
Analyzing Product Offerings
It’s crucial to know what your competitors are offering to stay relevant.
You don’t want your target audience to make their way to a competitor because you aren’t advertising a better or equivalent offer.
By gauging the popularity of photo-sharing and apps like Instagram Reels and TikTok, we can clearly see that interactive visual content is preferred by those consuming said content.
Most businesses that utilize e-commerce on any level create engaging visuals for their audience.
Google’s advanced image search helps marketing teams find product offers from competitors through the use of filtering for specific keywords and phrases.
You can determine what type of visual marketing your competitors use, whether it’s lifestyle imagery, videos, infographics, or professional product photography, and whether or not it’s working for them.
Brush Up on Competitor Price Points
A firm grasp of your competitor’s price points is essential for success online.
Setting rates with the competition in mind is a relatively low-risk way to determine what your prices should be going forward.
Price points are often conveyed through imagery, and you’ve got the ability to filter for particular products through advanced Google image search, so you might as well take advantage of it.
You will never have to adjust your prices to match our competition if it doesn’t suit your business goals, but knowing the way your competitors set prices is an essential reference point.
Find Guest Blogging Opportunities
Calling all business owners and entrepreneurs, guest blogging is a fantastic way to build links back to a specific brand.
Whether it be a blog or an online magazine, guest blogging means one thing: exposure.
However, there are a few things more time-consuming than searching the internet for guest blogging opportunities that make sense for the brand.
Believe it or not, the competition can pave a pathway for you here too, but only when you implement a move made by the savviest marketer.
You can land a successful guest blog post by doing a reverse image search with the headshot of the person that writes for your competitors’ blog.
This search will show every place that Google has located that person’s headshot on the internet, including blogs for which they’ve written a guest post.
Mind blown. Okay, maybe it’s not that amazing, but it’s still a really under-utilized and targeted way to remain competitive.
We’ll discuss how to reverse image search in detail as the article progresses.
Write Better Product Descriptions
Product descriptions are a significant part of a sales funnel, and they’re often responsible for converting website visitors and consumers.
It is crucial for product descriptions to be on point, and studying which keywords competitors are using to rank their products can make a major difference in conversion rates.
Google’s advanced image search is perfect for nailing down the keywords that are working for the competition.
To achieve this, you would simply use the domain filter option, and then type in a keyword that pertains to a product available from both e-commerce stores.
This option works especially well for selling on Amazon.
Once the domain filter results load, hover over the images to see which keywords have been used in the title.
It’s an amazing way to simplify deciding which phrases and keywords to include in the image descriptions, which are essential to search engine optimization.
How to Execute and Refine an Advanced Image Search on Google
A Google advanced image search is quite straightforward and easy to use.
From a marketing perspective, it’s one of the simplest yet advanced techniques to implement for refined results and inside competitor information.
- Pull up Google and click the images tab
- The gear or settings icon will appear in the upper right-hand corner
Click on it and select the advanced image search option to load the advanced image search dashboard. - Notice the options there are in which to filter images
This includes exact word or phrase, images including any of these words, images including none of these words, image color, size, and aspect ratio, region, image file format, usage rights, and specific site or domain. - Fill in the fields to preference and then watch the results filter in
Let’s get into a little bit of detail regarding finely tuning an advanced image search.
Exact Word or Phrase
This feature lets you type in an exact product name or keyword to pull up competitor photos for those specifications, helping to find a photo with that word or phrase in the description.
Any of These Words
A quick and efficient way to pull up photos that contain any of the keywords in question, using the “any of these words” filter is perfect for times when there isn’t a specific keyword in mind.
In fact, this feature can be useful for keyword brainstorming. Make sure to place the word “or” in-between each keyword typed in the field.
None of These Words
If there happens to be a word or phrase that doesn’t pertain to the current direction of market research, utilizing the “none of these words” field will take care of them.
Place a minus sign and then the word you’re not interested in filtering into your results, such as “– birthday cake”.
Image Color, Size, Format, and Aspect Ratio
Advanced image search is fantastic for marketers who already have a certain image in mind.
For those that know exactly what they’re looking for, such as competitor advertisement visuals previously seen on a social feed, images can be filtered by color, size, and aspect ratio, which is essentially the images’ width to height.
The larger the size of the image, the better the quality.
Looking for images in a certain format, such as JPG, PNG, or GIF? Advanced image search can do that too.
The Region, Domain, and Image Rights
Use the region filter to locate images from competitors around the world, or get super distinct by searching for imagery directly from a particular website or domain.
An advanced image search also makes it possible to sort files by usage rights, which is crucial to understanding which photos are free for public use and which could result in copyright infringement.
How to Do Reverse Image Search?
Reverse image searches, though incredibly beneficial to your marketing campaign, are uncomplicated to execute.
You can carry out a reverse image search on a PC or Mac by following these steps:
- Navigate to the main page of Google Images
- In the search bar, click the camera icon to reveal two options
At this point, you can either paste an image URL into the search field or choose to upload an image saved from the device. - From there, simply click search to reveal your results
When using Chrome, it’s even easier to reverse image search.
Right-clicking on any image on any website will provide the option to search with Google for that specific image.
If reverse image search is not working, it’s likely because the website the original image appears on prevents that image, and possibly every image on their site, from being indexed.
Ready to Elevate Your Visual Content?
Unlock the potential of your content creation journey with Writer Access! Explore a world of captivating visuals using our smooth integrations with leading image repositories like Storyblocks and Shutterstock.
Sign up for our free trial today to enhance your visual strategies effortlessly.
