 Hi, thank you. Howdy Moz fans. I've always wanted to say that. I'm so pleased to see you here in Seattle and with all this lovely weather and to be here with SEOs, because I love SEOs. Y'all are my favorite. Thanks, Morty. Thanks. So today we're going to be talking about visual search, tactics, tools, optimizations. It's something I really like, so let's get right into it. I'm head of SEO communications at Wix. We love images and we do lots of cool stuff with that, which is one of the reasons why I've been really excited about sharing this with you today. So we're going to cover what is the deal with visual search? Why does it matter? Why do we even care? How do you optimize your images for visual search? And how do you optimize real life for visual search? So we're going to get into all of that. First things first, what is the deal with visual search? Why is everyone talking about it? Why does it matter? Well, the reason why everyone's talking about it is because Google's talking about it a lot. They've been talking about it loads it, all of their big sort of flagship events at Google IO, at Search On. They keep talking about visual search and how it's changing the internet and how it's changing how people search. But the TLDR of why visual search is important is that it's essentially, I don't know how to put this, it's basically, it's all about me or more specifically, it's all about my super regular everyday camera roll. And the camera roll that I have, that you have, that everyone else has, that's full of pictures of places that I've been and people that I've seen and good friends and colleagues. And it's also full of things that I really like and people I've met, stuff that I'm really interested in, all of that sort of stuff, all of that sort of things, all those sort of things that are in your camera roll. And the reason why it's about that is because visual search turns your camera into an active tool, a primary resource for understanding the world. So you take a picture of an image and then you're able to understand the world. You don't have to enter anything else, you don't have to type anything else. Your camera is now the tool. And there's lots of different ways that you can explore this. So if my mom goes on vacation and she's not returning my calls and I want to know where she is, I can take her picture from Facebook, which I did. And I can pop it into Google's image search and I can find out exactly where she is. And not only that, not only do they give me information about where she is, but Google has lots of different image search tools and lots of different data sets that you use, including Vision AI, which looks at text, which looks at faces for sentiment, which looks at knowledge graph entities, which is lots of different elements, but they also look at location. So I can triangulate exactly where she is and go and gate crash her selfie whenever I feel like. Now, if somebody else is saying to me, like, why did you take this picture of Morty overseas next to this car? Why does it even matter? Why do you even care? Then I can pop that into PinBot, into Pinterest and I can also use their visual search tools to find out exactly who we should call about this particular motor vehicle. And if people don't believe me when I say that I met someone famous at the airport, then I can say, yeah, I did meet somebody famous at the airport and me and X to the Z exhibit are besties and we hang out all the time and we love cars and it's really, really great. And these are all the tools that you can use to help with visual search and it's really awesome. And I'm not the only person that loves visual search. I use it all the time, particularly when I try to figure out, like, what is this caterpillar? What is this flower? Can I eat this fruit? All of that sort of thing. And loads of people are using it. So Google Lens at their last Google IO reported that they've seen a three-fold increase in uses of Google Lens over the last year to the point where we're now seeing about eight billion searches per month on Google Lens. And Google love it. They keep adding more and more functionality to Google Lens to the point where now it includes Google Translate within Google Lens. They can take written text. So you take a photo of written text and you can make that into text, like on your computer. You can also use Google Lens for homework. You can use it for shopping. You can use it for identifying landmarks, for dining. They've also added things like multi-search where you can take a photo of a particular dress or a hat or whatever and you can add another element to the query. So you can say, I want that dress but I want it in blue or pink or red or yellow or whatever. And they're also thinking, they're also adding more, planning to add more functionality to it. So they're going to be adding things like AR so you can take a photo of your image of a place and then you can get new information like in in situ while you're there and you're looking at it and they're using all of their different tools to sort of understand this space. And that's all cool. That's great. That's awesome. And you might be saying, that's good for Google. What do I even do with all of that? They've got all these different tools. Everything's super whizzy. How does that actually affect me on search? Well, let's start with the start at the beginning. So we're going to talk about how do you optimize your images? Well, first things first, you want to lay your groundwork with image SEO. And you might say, well, the visual search and image SEO, they're the same. Of course, you would do that. But they're not the same. They're not exactly the same. And here's the reason why with image search, what you do is you enter a text or image searches about making sure that images are surfaceable when people enter text into Google image, the Google image section. So you would enter the word fruit and you might get a picture back of fruit. But what if you don't know what the fruit is called? What if you are in a new country and you've seen a new fruit and you don't know what it's called, you take an image of the fruit, and you might get back another picture of a fruit that matches. It's a visual match. You might get back text like a sort of featured snippet talking about it. You might get a YouTube video that's explaining what's going on, but you're not entering text. You'll be using some of the text cues from image search that are being provided, things like your alt tags, your image tags, your relevant file names, modern formats, all that sort of stuff. That all helps. That's all part of the process that Google is using to surface the information. But if you stop there, you would be missing the full picture. So there are other things that you should do. But the standard image search optimizations, I'm sure we're all doing. I'm sure you're all fantastic SEOs who are already doing this, and I don't need to explain to you all the details I have to get into that. But you should do those. Those will help you, but they are the first step. They're not the last step. One of the other things you should consider is making sure that you have your text the right way around. So Google has something called Optical Character Recognition, and they can understand text, but they can't read backwards. So this is a photo of me with a Google ID. And basically what we've got here is some photos, and you can see there's some images, some text behind us, but the Google's vision AI can't read it. They don't know what's going on there. And I tested this within Google Photos as well. So the team from Wix attended right in SEO, and I was looking for a photo of me and a colleague, and I couldn't find it. I searched for Wix, and I could not find it within my Google Photos. So I went through the dates and filtered through all of the different things, and I found the photo of me and my colleague Barr, who is in charge of our merch for this event. And I can see that in this image, the words are the wrong way around. So it's not showing as Wix, it's showing as XIW. And when I flipped it around and put it back into Google Photos, then I searched for Wix. Yeah, there it was. They know exactly where it is. So make sure that you've got your text the right way around. And I would also say that it's worth avoiding vertical text. Like if you were to go SEO, that's going to be harder for the bots to read than if you went SEO, for instance. The other ones that you should think about is making sure that you have relevant entities. Entities, everyone's talking about entities, everyone's talking about entities, and there's a reason why. But if you're not sure what it is, it's essentially, boils down to, it's kind of essentially a noun, right? So they tend to be a person, place, or thing. Google understands more than about five billion entities across their knowledge graph. And they use lots of different data points to validate these. They use lots of different data points to understand them. And Google's Vision AI uses these as well to help them to add tags to images. Within the Wix TMS, we are connected directly to the Vision AI. And as soon as somebody uploads an image onto Wix, you get the top 10 tags that they're pulled out there. So I uploaded a picture of Daffodil. And these were the images that are these were the tags that were pulled there. And you can see that these tags are actually matching what shows up on the knowledge panel, which is pulling from the knowledge graph, for things. So here we have a flower, we have a terrestrial, we have a narcissist, and that's matching up with what you're seeing on Google. So have a think about the kinds of entities that are relevant to your business. If you're not sure what kinds of entities you have, a really good way to check is to use your Google Photos as a data set. So Google Photos has an explore panel, and they sort your photos into entities. So this is the one from my camera roll. And you can see there's lots of things with, you can see they have more concrete things like a football or they have trains, but they also have things like baking and they also have things like sky, which are a little bit more ephemeral. So they're able to understand all of these types of entities. And there's lots of different things, interesting things going on here. The other thing that I also find interesting about here is that the only brand that's showing here is Lego. And Lego is interesting because Lego is hitting a few different points here. Lego is an entity in a few different ways. Lego also puts the word Lego on every single Lego, on every single module of the thing. So not only are they showing for their being understood as an entity, they're also being understood as a word every single time. And so they're really knocking it out of the park with that. So if you are a business and you might think, well, what do I do with this? Well, this is a photo of me at a landmark in Riverside, California. If I was a real estate agent in Riverside, California, it would make sense for me to take a photo of myself near a landmark in Riverside, California in order to add in multiple data points for Google to understand where my business is. So, and like this picture is my own personal picture, but Google can understand that, like, that's that landmark that's a famous hotel in Riverside, California. So think about the entities that you have. I sort of shared a recent thread of a picture in Berlin with a bicycle next to it. If I was a bicycle shop that was selling bicycles or hiring bicycles in Berlin, it would make sense for me to show pictures of Berlin and bicycles at the same time on my website. So just make sure you're thinking about that. So when you're thinking about optimizing your images, think about standard SEO, you're already doing that, well done. Make sure that you have readable text and make sure that you have relevant entities on your site. Now here's the fun part. How do you optimize real life? Yeah, what do you actually do with that? Well, one of the things that's really important to remember with visual search is that the user, there's 8 billion people on Earth and they're all going to be searching unique images when they're looking at images. So to control this variable, you're going to want to think about a few things and your first thing you should absolutely do is dust off those guidelines and make sure that you have super tight, consistent IRL branding, right? Your IRL branding should be really, really tight. If you're not sure about this, let's go back to exhibit A. Now in this photo with me and X to the Z exhibit at LAX, I think, like, I think this is a few years ago. I thought I was really cool. I was meeting somebody from television. I was like, awesome. Exhibit thinks he's like, he's like the main dude. But everything's great and he's like super famous. Of course, people want to take pictures with me. But from a visual search point of view, do you know who the real person or the real winner of this photo is? Pete's coffee. Now, Pete's coffee is winning here for a few reasons. Why? Well, because like Lego before, they're being recognized for a few different points. Google is able to read Pete's coffee really clearly. They can see that text that's going across the top. They can see that they can see the text that's going across the logo. They understand that really clearly. They're also pretty sure that that's the Pete's coffee logo. And why is that? Well, because if you Google Pete's coffee, you don't get images of beautiful latte art and like lovely leafy teas and lots of people being poetic in a coffee shop. What you get is a you get a crash course in rock solid, super consistent, handcrafted, top notch, IRL branding. Pete's coffee is not messing around. Their their logo is the same everywhere. Their logo is the same on the outside of their buildings on the on the outside of their cups. It's on it's on the inside of their buildings. They're not messing around. They have made sure that they're they're super consistent all the way through. So you want to be like Pete. You want to make sure that you have the same logos IRL that you have in your structured data on your website that you have in your knowledge panel on your Wikipedia on your Google merchant on your Google my business. Make sure that all of it is super consistent and do not forget about merch and uniforms. This is an example from a small business. They normally have their brand colors in red and white. But in this particular instance, they had an away day sort of thing and they got some sweatshirts right. The sweatshirts were in a different brand color. So when I search this, Google's like, who are these people? I don't know who this is. What is going on with this? And when I search their normal merch, which is in their normal brand colors, they can find out exactly who they are. So make sure that you're being super consistent. And one of the reasons why is because Google will ask you your color schemes when you submit your when you submit your logos on Google Merchant Center. And they also are able to read colors when they're when they're assessing your visual search. So people are saying, oh, let's get creative. Let's like mix it up. Don't don't mix it up. Stick with stick with your branding. Like stick with those brand guidelines. You in the you in the person who said those brand lines guidelines need to be like really good friends. Get on top of that and it will work for you. The other thing you want to think about is IRL sponsorships. So this is an example of something Wix was sponsoring the Yankees a few years ago. We had some really nice positioning behind the batter's box. And you can see from this image that that, you know, Google's recognizing like, yeah, Wix sponsored that. That's what's going on there. But you can also see that there's a little bit of the if you go further towards the right towards where they were the actual batter's in front of the logo, they're getting a little less certainly like we think that's Wix. I'm pretty sure. But like it's a lot it's not a certain as the other ones on the side. So we want to make sure that you're you're making sure that you're really, really clear. And one of the reasons why is because this can affect the SERP. So if you Google Wix Yankees Stadium, at the very top of the SERP, you get the kind of things that you would expect. You get articles about Wix sponsoring the Yankee Stadium, people talking about Wix at the Yankee Stadium, all of that sort of stuff. But a little bit further down the SERP, you start to see something interesting. You start to see places where they're surfacing content, and they have done this via a visual match, they haven't done this via a text queue. So there aren't they aren't looking at the alt text, they aren't looking at any text on the page. And none of these, these pages have any reference to Wix within the content. They're all, but they're all have images of Wix within the image. And the Giffy one is also interesting because Giffy is using Vision AI in order to generate more information about images. So they created a whole category for Wix.com because they were able to understand to identify the entity of Wix.com within that particular image. So make sure that you are thinking about your sponsorships strategically. Make sure that you're not having any place where you've got where you have your main sponsorships that could be blurred by or or or blocked by sort of the main activity of your event. And make sure that you've got clear areas where people can take nice pictures of what they're doing next to your logos or next to your sponsor logos. And make sure that that you know you're you've got them in good lighting and with good visibility and that you're prioritizing unobscured placements. The other thing you should think about with regards to with regards to optimizing real life is making sure that you have 100 percent that pick. Now if you're not sure what that pick is it's this kind of thing. This is me next to the space shuttle endeavor like I'm a big fan of the space shuttle endeavor and they have it at a museum in Los Angeles and I walked in and I was like I want that pick I want the pick with the spaceship. And I'm not the only one everybody has this pick. Not only does everybody have this pick but in fact it's in their knowledge graph. And they know it they saw me coming they know that I'm like I'm that basic where I'm just going to show up and get a picture with a spaceship. They put it on their home page. They put it on their home page so that when people do that pick they actually have it there and Google can match that visual search to that picture. So if you don't have that pick which you know very well know what that is on your website. Make sure that you have it on your website so that it can match with that. And you might say well what if I don't have a spaceship. What if I just don't like what do I do and my response to that is you know make one. This doesn't have to cost you the earth. This doesn't have to be impossible and impossible task. This is a small business near me. They run a super girly salon with nails and hair and the whole thing and they're like really really into it. And when they made their salon a super small business they made this space and it's clearly like for the gram right. And they use it all over the gram. So this is their gram. They put it all over over the thing. But it's super really it's really really recognizable. If I pop it into Google search even though it's a super small business they have it in their Google business. They have it on their website. They have it on their Instagram and Google knows exactly who that is even though they're super small business. So this is not something that's impossible. It doesn't have to be super expensive. If you think about if you think about that pink wall that everybody goes to or if you think about when people paint wings on the wall or that sort of thing just make some space. If this is something that's important to you and if you're not sure what that pick is for you. Look at your user generated content. Look at the pictures of people tag you on an Instagram. Go on to Yelp and see the kinds of pictures that you're that people are taking. And even for restaurants I've seen it where people will put their logo on the plate because they know that people are taking pictures of their food. These are different things that you can do. So have a look at the kinds of pictures that people are taking and see how you can optimize those so that you're showing for Google search. The other thing you want to think about is encouraging relevant user generated content. So not to brag but I am a level six Google guide. I have the socks to prove it. And I think the world is a much better place because they have pictures of my burritos. Now if you're if you're wondering like what why do Google guides do this we do it for points. I get points and you get like all of these different notifications and they're like how you did great. Like all people really like your pictures and stuff like Google is actively encouraging Google guides to add more content to like to search all the time. And that's because Google are using this content for visual search that they recently announced multi-search near me particularly targeted at the food industry. So people will take. So if I take a picture of that burrito somebody could say near me and they could find a similar burrito near them which essentially means that your Google business profile pages are now a visual search data set for Google. So if you have a Google business profile Google Google business profile page then think about it like that. Think about think about the ways that Google might might search your your images and make sure that you have good images in there. And also you want to use this as an opportunity to entice more people to add more content. How do you do that? Speaking as a Google guide. I can tell you that I would say that it's worth leading the leading by example. So put good owner photos on on your site. So the people know that there's things that they could take photos of before. Anyway, also make sure that you like the top photos because again all those Google guides will get a notification when their pictures get liked, when they get when they get more engagement, all of that all of that sort of stuff. Reply to user say thank you for visiting. This was really cool. Like that picture is great. This is really nice. Display your reviews on the website. If you have you put on your website that you that you get reviews that you have like four out of five stars or whatever on on Google business profile, you will start getting more reviews than if you don't have that on your site. So add that. And also you can think about adding a review prompt at locations so people will say review us on Trip Advisor or review us on Google business profile or whatever, whatever, whatever. So think about you're adding adding that information as well. And there's lots of different places where Google's pulling this kind of information. There's lots of different places where you can engage with people to to drive user generated content. And it's worth thinking about that so that you can have more space and grow more there. So to sum up, visual search is growing rapidly. There are lots and lots of tools. I've talked a lot here about Google, Google Lens and about how Google Lens is doing it, but Amazon is all over this, eBay is all over this, Snapchat is doing stuff, the Pinterest is everywhere. There's loads of different ways that people are getting involved. So if you're not thinking about visual search, it's worth starting to think about how people are engaging with visual search because only is it impacting the way people searching, but it's also impacting the search results. And also remember that the photo is the query, right? And Google is pulling through lots of different data sets and lots of different data points in order to satisfy that query. So make sure that you've got a good sense of what that is for your business. Make sure that you're optimizing your images with standard image SEO, so good image text cues and also good image formats and well formatted CDNs, all of that sort of fantastic stuff. Make sure that any text on your images is readable. So this should be in the right format. I'm sorry, readable, both going in the right direction, but also that you're using fonts that are easily readable and that you also think about having relevant entities. There's a number of different ways that you can connect with understanding your entity profile, but I make sure that you understand what those things are. The other one you want to think about is optimizing IRL, guiding people to give you better, better content when they're using your user-generated content. So make sure that your branding is consistent and strategic, including logos, because Google can recognize logos really clearly. Also think about creating user-generated content opportunities, so you can put a sort of like scenic viewpoint here and then everyone will take their picture at that scenic viewpoint and you'll know that you should include that picture on your website as well, for instance. Also think about IRL, IRL sponsorships and how you can SEO those. One of the ones that I've seen is like people having glowing or sort of light up logo signs at sponsorship things. Those can be tricky because sometimes they don't render when people take photos. So think about those sorts of things as well. And also you want to think about guiding your user-generated content within Google Business Profile. And I think that these are all fantastic opportunities for visual search. And if you take my advice, I'm sure that you'll be able to take your visual search opportunities to the moon. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you very much, MozCon. I think with Phil Carter.