Shutterstock's Data Scientist Kevin Lester Talks Reverse Image Search

Stock photo company Shutterstock introduced reverse image search for desktop earlier this spring. This made it easy for users to search Shutterstock's website with an image, instead of using keywords. Shutterstock's data scientist Kevin Lester, who looks closely at the adoption of these new tools, was able to find out what patterns emerge from the data. In fact, Lester shared with IBTimes, that those who used reverse-image search for searches wound up making more downloads per search than those from a user with a text-based search. "We've found that users who performed at least one reverse image search prior to making a purchase with Shutterstock were 3.49 times more likely to make a subsequent purchase than those who did not," says Lester.