Google+ has been undergoing some fairly major renovations lately and it looks like one of the neatest new features baked into the social platform has managed to sneak under the radar.
Both the desktop version and Android app for Google+ now allow users to search through their images using keywords. You can find a person, pet or inanimate object within any of your uploaded photos simply by typing in what you're looking for and Google+ will deliver any relevant results.
Android Police was among the first to report on the news of Google's new photo search feature. The site references Googler Vic Gundotra's comments during the Google I/O 2013 keynote, where Gundotra revealed that Google+ would begin attempting to auto-tag posts based on a number of factors, including attached pictures. Now, it looks like the visual analysis technology that Google created to enable auto-tagging is being leveraged into the photo search tool.
To use the new feature, simply log into your Google+ account or open up the Android app. The "search photos" function is simply an option within the photos menu. Now, type in whatever you are looking for and Google+ will do its best to pull up any relevant photos from your library.
While the feature isn't perfect, it's pretty darn close. We tried a few sample searches with keywords like "dog," "trees" and "food" and Google pulled up a very impressive selection of photos pertaining only to those words. While it did not capture every photograph that related to the search string, it didn't offer a single unrelated photograph either.
The feature is live now on Google+. Let us know what you think of it in the comments.
