Up until now it was necessary to open the Google Image Search web page to use the new feature. Users on that page could then upload photos or images from their computer or paste an url into a form to do a reverse search on the image it was pointing to.

While that was ok for users who wanted to search for images on their computer, it meant lots of copying and pasting for users who wanted to search for images that were already available on the Internet.

The Google Chrome extension Search by Image changes this for that group of users. It is an extension officially created by Google to promote the new feature.

Once installed, it adds a new entry to the Chrome right-click context menu when the mouse cursor hovers over an image.

Selecting Search Google with this image searches for the image directly on Google Images. The search results page is directly opened.

Google search by image has a single option. Chrome users can open the options with a click on Wrench > Tools > Extensions and the selection of Options under the extension’s listing there.

It is possible to activate a small icon on every image when hovering with the mouse over it which can also launch the image search on Google.

Chrome users can download and install the extension from the official Chrome Web Store.

Google Image Swirl starts of like any other Google Image search. The user enters a search phrase in the search form on the page. The script will then display possible matches for that entered search phrase. So far so identical to the standard Google Image search engine.

Differences begin to appear after the selection of one of the results.

Google Image Swirl will display the image and related images in the same interface instead of loading the website that is containing the image. Related images are placed around the selected image with lines showing their relation. Even better is the fact that second tier relations are shown as well on the page. A click on the central image will load that image in the website that is was published on.

It is however also possible to click on one of the related images to navigate further into that path. This can be a very interesting way of exploring images about a specific subject. Google Image Swirl is an experimental service that is open to all users over at Google Labs.

Update: Google Image Swirl has been discontinued. It is no longer available.

One aspect of Google Image Search that is bugging many users is that it does not link directly to the image but to a Google page that displays the website containing the image in a frame. This means that users need to click on the image to be taken to the framed page where they can either scroll until they find the image or click on the image that is displayed on top to display the full sized image.

The Google Image Relinker userscript changes this default behavior by linking directly to the images in the Google Image search results pages. The developer has confirmed that the script works in Firefox, Opera and Seamonkey with the possibility that it will work in other web browsers that support userscripts (Google Chrome, Safari) as well.

The script basically safes time by allowing the user to view the image directly from the search result pages. A link to the framed version (which is the default way) is provided as well. Google Image Relinker is an interesting userscript for those users who work with the Google Image Search engine regularly.

Add some keywords that should be used to search for new images, select if you want surfer friendly images only and define the change rate in minutes. You can try it out immediately by right-clicking the icon again and selecting Update Now. This takes a few seconds but the wallpaper should change into a random image that was pulled from Google. The software will only search for high quality images that fit nicely on most screens.

I suggest you add at least 5-10 keywords to receive enough images to avoid repetition. The application pulls the images only from the first page of results and picks a random image from that page which means you have a chance of 1 in 18 that the same picture will be picked again as the wallpaper.