One of the holy grails of the web is a way to search visually. Stock photography agencies do a great job of this, allowing you to search for horizontal green fields or smiling engaged couples. But of course, they aren’t really searching visually, they are using keywords that staff members use to tag each image, from color to feeling and subject.
As far as shopping search goes, no one has yet found a way to automatically parse through the thousands of items offered for sale on the web and show you other items that look the same. Not for lack of trying, of course. The latest attempt is a new search engine called .
This new site offers accessories, including jewelry and watches, from many retailers and allows you to search by visual aspects, colors, and categories. Retailers include Amazon, ice.com, eLuxury, and others.
Basically Like.com is an affiliate site: they make money if you end up clicking on a product and buying it from the retailer (all the transactions happen on the retailers’ sites, a tracking code carries the information that you came from Like.com.
) So does it work? Well, it is pretty good at showing you items of similar colors and shapes. But much of the time, it appears to be using keywords rather than visual similarities.
(Bangle searches will include cuffs that are called bangles in the description and tennis bracelets include money clips with tennis racquets on them.) It can definitely offer you pages of watches with orange straps or multi-strand pearl chokers, but earring silhouettes are a bit more problematic. Still, if you want to comparison shop basic yellow gold hoops or tennis bracelets across retailers, it does the job surprisingly well.
But somehow it isn’t really much fun, despite a celebrity wardrobe search section and the lure of locating the handbag of your dreams. It’s definitely worth checking out, though, especially if you are an online retailer who has struggled with how to present customers with easy ways to find jewelry on your site. It may even inspire you to create some interesting keywords and create a few custom searches of your own.
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