Google Image Search - Is there a way to influence the related icons at the top of the image search results?

[JaredBroussard]

Google recently added related icons at the top of the image search results page. Some of the icons may be unrelated to the search. Are there any best practices to influence what is positioned in the related image icons section?  Thank you.

[Dr-Pete]

Don't have an exact date, but the UI feature is relatively new. I agree with @effectdigital that this is a general capability that Google has been building/expanding for a while. It's helpful to look at that underlying logic, as it will spawn new features over time.

[effectdigital]

I don't personally think so, but some will disagree. It's existed on a functional level (Google drawing relationships between trending entities, and what images it should show) for many years. Throughout the years there have been various search experiments which make some of this information visible to Google's end users, but this is the first one in a long time which has gained any kind of usage

The technology is probably highly related to Google's "people also search for" facility on their standard results, which seems to come and go over the years (sometimes remaining accessible to JS-disabled browsers, even when standard end-users can no longer access the technology)

Some will say it's shiny and new, certainly this particular implementation is a little green. Overall though, no it's not really new technology (just a new spin on it)

[JaredBroussard]

Thank you so much for the informative and detailed answer.  Is the related image search a new feature in the results?

[effectdigital]

Yes there is, in fact there's a way to influence ALL of the images which are displayed, but it's usually costly and time-intensive

For  example, look at this Google search query:

https://www.google.com/search?q=frozen&tbm=isch

... this used to contain loads of pictures of frozen foods and frozen landscapes. Now it's all about a Disney movie! Another good query is "Matrix" which (for image results) used to be very technical, but for over a decade it's been dominated by the Matrix movie franchise

If you create such an online storm, that you 'become' the trend, you can 'take over' Google's image results. Sometimes this only lasts a short while, sometimes it lasts well over 10 years

The 'related' images that run along the top (which can sometimes be derivatives, e.g: 'related movies', or instead they can be search narrowing facilities, e.g: 'frozen foods' as opposed to the generic 'frozen' results) - can be influenced. Usually the related images, are 'runner up' trends that didn't quite manage to dominate Google's results, yet which still count as distinct and highly popular search entities

This one is quite a good example: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=automobile - there are related images for specific vehicles, titans in the automobile industry (Henry Ford) / historic, even stuff like 'vector' which covers digital automobile art

Your best bet at influencing which things appear along the top, is to influence which commonly-related pictures people ALSO search for when they use Google. Unfortunately, that's not easy at all and often involves colossal production and / or marketing budgets which extend offline in a big way