While top executives of Google’s global and India teams met at the company’s annual India event earlier this week and announced a surfeit of new developments, features and tools, one stood out in particular.

Google Search, a cornerstone of the company, literally the rock on which it was built, has introduced some key new features, namely Multisearch. Basically, this allows users to take a picture of an object they want to be identified, add text and then search, akin to pointing at a particular thing and asking what it is.

“If it is compatible with regional languages, then the marketers will have their table full, trying to draw strategies and implement this new option. It will open new opportunities both from an organic and paid media perspective,” he adds.

While the multisearch tool is presently only available in English, Hindi is expected to be introduced soon next year, and regional languages are bound to follow. Indeed, many of the developments announced at Google for India 2022 focused on making Google more accessible across more regions, which means, for one, shopping just got a lot more personalised.

Shrenik Gandhi, Co-founder and CEO, White Rivers Media, points out that shopping is undergoing a dramatic transformation. “With the rise in experiential shopping, everyone is trying their best to leverage interactive technologies and artificial intelligence to offer their audience the best and most seamless shopping experience. Brands can now make the most of “Multisearch Near Me” and “Scene Exploration” features to surface their products and enjoy more discovery in the digital marketplace.”

Raghav Bagai, Co-founder at Sociowash, also believes that Google Multisearch will open a new dimension of user behaviour. “This new feature will help in understanding how users make use of images to search. In the world of SEO, Image Search has been an under-tapped tool and Google has introduced it well in time. Brands across fashion, home decor, interior, etc. will have direct use cases of this feature.”

Indeed, Google claims that more than 8 billion people use Google Lens each month to do visual searches, with India leading the way, and not by an insignificant amount.

Tanvi Bosmia, Associate Account Director, SoCheers, says there is no doubt that Google search is one of the most accessible features for discoverability with over 100 billion monthly searches on the platform. “So, it'd be safe to say that the new multisearch feature will enhance an Indian consumer's buying journey at the search stage. As for brands, it'll provide them new avenues to reach out to this audience, through more comprehensive search marketing efforts.

Vikas Kumar, Founder & CEO, Digital ROI, points out that multisearch will bring enhanced focus on indexing images on your website. Specific images that use alt tags with your keywords will help users discover websites, he said.

“Consumers who don’t know the name of the design or colour of apparel can still search for what they need. This can be a great way to bring in more business. Local businesses can also take advantage of multisearch. Someone looking for repair for a broken part can simply click a picture of the broken part and type "Repair". Google will direct users to relevant repair shops locally," Kumar added.

Bosmia agrees, saying, “Creatively, this new feature brings the opportunity for marketers to combine the two search mediums of image and text in some unique executions. Moreover, Google is leveraging its latest advancements in artificial intelligence to make the search process for its users more intuitive and natural, which has the potential to further open up AI integrations for the brands as well, in the realm of search marketing.”

As Gandhi concludes, “If you ignore the significance of multisearch, your business could be losing out on a sizable portion of consumers. Your target audience will now access the content on your website, app, and other online platforms in fresh, cutting-edge ways as a byproduct of Google's ongoing efforts to improve its customers' search experiences. As the best plan of action, make sure that all your images and website pages are optimised for search.”

Aabha Singh, Senior Manager – Content, TheSmallBigIdea, observes that with the multisearch feature, the amalgamation of text with images is going to help brands reach an audience that is more visual-inspired than just describing their needs or requirements. "Advertisers will have a ball game with strategies that are to be designed for a varied set of audiences as this feature promises to reach a region and demography that is not currently on Google," she says, quipping that the multisearch feature may be the irony we wished to see for the law of diminishing marginal utility as from here on it is only going to exceed and increase consumption.