Earlier this month, Google decided to entirely deprecate search by image, also known as Google Reverse Image Search, and replace it with Google Lens. This came as a surprise to many, but we've been noticing a gradual shift towards the Lens engine for quite some time.
First signs of the shift.
In March 2022, Chrome users noticed a major change. The default right-click "Search image with Google" has been replaced with "Search with Google Lens".
Although this change altered the way people could search the images via Google, you could still disable this through Chrome flags and revert to the previous way of performing image searches.
Recent Google Lens changes.
At the beginning of the year, Google rolled out a new layout for Google Lens, which was potentially the biggest indication that they want to focus on this engine fully, and because of that, will likely get rid of the search by image at some point.
At SerpApi, after users reported that the Lens API was not working as intended, we swiftly rolled out the update, which brought back the API with features similar to the previous layout. You can check the whole conversation on our Public Roadmap.
Google Lens as the default image search.
This was not the end of the changes Google planned for its users. In February 2025, they changed the search by image option to always redirect to the Google Lens output. You can still disable the Google Lens right-click option via Chrome flags, but it no longer matters, as both options now return the same output.
Of course, many people were justifiably upset with the change, as the data returned in Google Lens is different than with the old reverse image search engine, and a lot of people relied on the latter with their use case.
Alternatives to Google reverse image search.
At SerpApi, we offered a Google Reverse Image Search API, which obviously has also been affected by the change. However, having our users' best interests in mind, we offer alternate solutions:
While the first option is well-known and recognized as a very useful tool in many use cases (even more now that it has been a direct replacement for Google Reverse Image Search API), the second one is more niche but perhaps more reflective of a deprecated Google engine.
We are also actively working on introducing new features, mainly for Google Lens. You can find the complete list on our Public Roadmap, but I'm listing a few for your convenience:
- [New API] Google Lens Visual Matches
- [Google Lens API] Scrape About this Image Tab
- [New API] Google Lens extract Products tab
- [New API] Google Lens Exact Matches (already implemented)
- [Google Lens API] Allow search with text
- [Google Lens API] Scrape Related searches results
- [Google Lens API] Identify and scrape text on images
- [Google Lens API] Support image search via file upload
- [New Bing Search API] Bing Image Visual search
If any of these look interesting or useful to your use case, feel free to follow up in the appropriate thread or let us know via chat at serpapi.com or through email at contact@serpapi.com. We'll do our best to implement the features as soon as possible.
Why SerpApi?
We provide the most diverse range of APIs out there—and we're constantly expanding. Transparency is important to us, which is why we have a Public Roadmap where you can explore upcoming features, track bug fixes, and even request new APIs! If your request aligns with our mission of scraping all search engines, we'll do our best to make it happen.
We also know that performance matters. That's why we offer powerful features to improve latency drastically:
Want to see if our APIs are the right fit for you? Test them out for free in our Playground!
Contact us!
If you have any questions or would like to discuss any issues or matters, feel free to contact our team at contact@serpapi.com. We'll be more than happy to assist you and answer all of your questions!
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