Finding products that are similar to a product selected from a plurality of products

摘要

A system and method extracts relevant image features about listed products in a network-based publication system for enabling image similarity searching of such listed products. When a seller lists a product, an image of the product is uploaded and may be sent to a picture processing service, which generates several digests. The digests are compressed data structures each representing a particular image feature of a listed product such as edge, color, texture, or words. These digests are then stored in a database, where the digests can be used to retrieve listings of products by image similarity at scale. A similar process can be performed for a query by image similarity searching the database for products similar to the query. When a product is located by image similarity search, a selectable icon is provided to enable more products like the located product to be located by image similarity search.

主权项

1. A computer-implemented method comprising:
performing a first database image similarity search for images similar to a first query image; providing to a client machine a first plurality of images that result from the first database search, the first plurality of images selectable for providing a second query image; responsive to selection of one of the first plurality of images, performing a second database image similarity search for images similar to the second query image; providing to the client machine the second plurality of images that result from the second image similarity search and at least one selectable icon to find more images of products like at least one of the second plurality of images of products; responsive to selection of one of the at least one selectable icon, performing a third database image similarity search for images similar to the at least one of the second plurality of images of products; and providing to the client machine the third plurality of images that result from the third database image similarity search.