When you're using a search engine to find what you're looking for, you're probably used to typing a query, looking at the results, and refining your query. Every now and again you might even click a button that says it will show you similar results. Now Microsoft has added a button with exactly that feature to the company's image search engine.

When you conduct a search using Live Search Images, you can hover your mouse over any image and click the "show similar images" button. To be honest, it's a bit tricky to tell exactly what this does. Because if you've searched for something like "stick" you're probably already looking at a window filled with pictures of sticks. If you click the similar images button, you'll wind up on another page with images filled with sticks. That said, when I said I wanted to see similar images to a stick bug, I did get another picture of an insect - and several pictures of deodorant, glue sticks, and stick figures.

If you're looking for a more advanced image comparison service, check out TinEye, a beta site that allows you to upload a picture and find images on the internet that are compositionally similar.

[via Google Operating System]