Google Images Introduces Tags to Guide Search

News from Google. Starting today, in the search bar of Google Images, a series of tags are proposed before the search results, like a carousel, which should facilitate the search.

We tried searching Google Images for “vacations“, and obtained the following result:

As you can see, below the search field and before the resulting images, clickable tags have appeared. The search was performed after logging in with a Google account.

We repeated the search after logging out of the Google account and the result immediately changed. It is evident that the suggested tags are therefore the result of the user’s Google searches and interests, and that image search has become increasingly personalized.

It remains to be understood why Google has made this change. If there are any official statements, we can expect declarations like “we have introduced this innovation to improve the user experience”. However, playing the devil’s advocate a bit, we might instead consider that the reason is to be found in the collection of new information in order to further profile the unaware user.