At Google I/O last year, Google announced 3D images with augmented reality in search. Google even posted live examples of this last year. But now it is showing up for some e-commerce sites.
Burberry bags in 3D. Glenn Gabe of G-Squared Interactive shared an example on Twitter based on this article of a Burberry bag showing up as a “view in 3D” option in the Google search results.
Here is that snippet:
View in 3D. When you click on view in 3D, Google will show you the image using AR, augmented reality, as if it is in front of you through your mobile phone’s camera lens.
Here is how the bag looks like on my desk:
And you can also see it as a 3D object. You can rotate the bag around and see the various angles:
How do I get 3D images into Google? Last May we posted a slide showing 3D markup you can potentially add to your images to help them show up as 3D images in mobile search.
Here is that slide again:
Why we care. Numerous apps already support AR (augmented reality) to enable consumers to see how furniture and other objects look in their homes or to see what different eyeglasses or makeup would look on them. This shows how Google can start to enable those kinds of capabilities in the SERP for commercial queries.
Over the past several months, Google has been dropping hints that image search is something SEOs, webmasters, developers and content producers should pay attention to. It is a good way for searchers to discover new content and information and can be helpful in not just driving eye-balls but potentially even conversions.
Seeing that now a retail brand, like Burberry, has this feature live, is really exciting for this 3D image feature in search. Retailers and brands now have added incentive to include 3D images and structured data on their sites.
Related: AR and Structured Data are both elements in our new Periodic Table for Digital Commerce Marketing.
About The Author
Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry’s personal blog is named Cartoon Barry and he can be followed on Twitter here.