eBay Tests Image Search on Desktop
eBay is bringing one of its most popular mobile app features to the desktop web experience, testing a new image-based search tool that lets users find products by uploading photos.
Search by image was first introduced to the eBay mobile app in 2017 but a buggy experience and mixed results forced the company to remove the feature for a time in 2021 before bringing it back again in 2022.
Unfortunately, even once the "technical issues" were supposedly resolved and the feature was reenabled, users have continued to report mixed results with eBay's computer vision and AI technology often missing the mark and returning wildly inaccurate or irrelevant search results.
Liz Morton
Now eBay is taking Search By Image to the desktop web experience, as some users report seeing a new icon appear in the search bar starting earlier this week.
The feature appears to be a beta test which may be account or browser specific - I saw it in Chrome when viewing incognito but not when logged in and in FireFox when logged in but not in incognito.
Once you click the camera icon, you have the option of dragging and dropping or uploading an image, or alternatively you can copy and paste a link to the image.
I tested it out using three items I had also used in previous testing of search by image in the app and AI Magical Listing - a sea turtle themed mouse pad with wrist rest, a Starbucks mug, and a statue of a mom and baby manatee.
The desktop version of Search By Image correctly identified the sea turtle theme, but as with previous testing, it struggled to identify what the item was - suggesting a book sleeve, console cover, and koozie instead of a mouse pad.
The Starbucks mug similarly followed along with my previous testing - it clearly identified the logo and suggested other mugs with the same logo, but other than that, it was a variety of styles and sizes with many not having a lid like my original picture.
And at least this time, the image search did correctly identify the statue as manatees.
That's a marked improvement from previous testing in which eBay's image search in app thought the same statue was Godzilla.
Coincidentally, users experienced a massive disruption earlier this week that completely disabled search for over an hour. While eBay never provided any official explanation, it would not be surprising if the initial launch of this new feature may have contributed to that outage.
Liz Morton
If eBay wants suggestions for other long-standing app only features to bring over to the desktop experience, users have been asking for years for a dark mode option for the website. Who knows, they might even win another award for it.
What do you think of eBay Search By Image for desktop and are there other app-only features you'd like to see brought over to the web experience? Let us know in the comments below!
