Search for images on websites

With Vertex AI Search, you can search for images using a app with website data. You supply a query in the form of a text string or an image, and the default_config.search method returns images for that query.

Note: Image search is not available using the Google Cloud console.

Before you begin

Make sure you satisfy the following prerequisites. Requirements vary depending on whether you search using a text query or an image query.

• If you search using a text query in your website search app, make sure the following is turned on: Enterprise edition features

• If you search using an image query in your website search app, make sure the following are turned on:

  • Enterprise edition features

  • Advanced website indexing

Preview image search

To use the command line to preview image results for a website, use the engines.servingConfigs.search method:

Note: You can search over an app using the engines.servingConfigs.search method and you can search over a data store using the dataStores.servingConfigs.search method. For the following procedure, Google recommends searching using the engines.servingConfigs.search method.

1. Find your app ID. If you already have your app ID, skip to the next step.

   1. In the Google Cloud console, go to the AI Applications page.

      Go to Apps

   2. On the Apps page, find the name of your app and get the app's ID from the ID column.

2. Call the engines.servingConfigs.search method, specifying 1 for the search_type. Choose the method syntax depending on whether your query is text or image bytes.

   Key Term: In Vertex AI Search, the term app can be used interchangeably with the term engine in the context of APIs.

   Query is a text string

   curl -X POST \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
   -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
   -H "X-Goog-User-Project: PROJECT_ID" \
   "https://discoveryengine.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/collections/default_collection/engines/APP_ID/servingConfigs/default_config:search" \
   -d '{
   "servingConfig": "projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/collections/default_collection/engines/APP_ID/servingConfigs/default_search",
   "query": "QUERY",
   "pageSize": "PAGE_SIZE",
   "offset": "OFFSET",
   "params": {"search_type": 1}
   }'
   

   Query is an image

   curl -X POST \
   -H "Authorization: Bearer $(gcloud auth print-access-token)" \
   -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
   -H "X-Goog-User-Project: PROJECT_ID" \
   "https://discoveryengine.googleapis.com/v1beta/projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/collections/default_collection/engines/APP_ID/servingConfigs/default_search:search" \
   -d '{
   "servingConfig": "projects/PROJECT_ID/locations/global/collections/default_collection/engines/APP_ID/servingConfigs/default_search",
   "imageQuery": {"imageBytes":"IMAGE_BYTES"},
   "pageSize": "PAGE_SIZE",
   "offset": "OFFSET",
   "params": {"search_type": 1}
   }'
   

   Replace the following:

   • PROJECT_ID: the ID of your project.

   • APP_ID: the ID of your app.

   • QUERY: the search query text. For example, "Round headlight cars" or "show me dress with stripes."

   • IMAGE_BYTES: the image in Base64 encoded bytes. Supported formats are JPEG, PNG, and BMP.

   • PAGE_SIZE: optional. The number of results returned by the search. The default value is 10 for website search.

     • Values below 0 cause an error.
     • Values above 100 cause the value to be set to 100.

   • OFFSET: optional. The starting index of the results. The default value is 0.

     For example, if the offset is 2 and the page size is 10, results 2 through 11 are returned.

3. Review the response. See the following table for field descriptions:

   Field	Description
   title	The plain text title of the web page that contains the image
   htmlTitle	The title, in HTML, of the web page that contains the image
   displayLink	An abridged version of this search's result URL, usually the domain name—for example, www.example.com
   link	The URL of the image
   image.contextLink	Context link: A URL pointing to the web page that contains the image
   image.byteSize	The size of the image, in bytes
   image.width	The width of the image, in pixels
   image.height	The height of the image, in pixels
   image.thumbnailWidth	The width of the thumbnail image, in pixels
   image.thumbnailHeight	The height of the thumbnail image, in pixels
   image.thumbnailLink	The URL of the thumbnail image
   mime	The MIME type of the image
   fileFormat	The file format of the image