Riya.com - Visual Search

Riya is the more useful and advanced cousin of Google Image search. Specifically, the site focuses on searching images, and while this mission may be simple, Riya fulfills its duty. Simply enter in a search term, specify a given subcategory, and Riya will return you all relevant results. Categories include people, objects, tags, my photos, and the web. Moreover, users can upload their individual photo albums to Riya, and train the program to search for specific faces (either through manual training, auto-training, or tagging), and search inside the photo for text, time, location, or files.

“Riya is a new kind of visual search engine. We look inside the image, not only at the text around it.”

Riya is definitely not your traditional image search engine. On the one hand, it has all the functionality of a traditional search engine. On the other hand, the site allows you to maintain maximum search control over your own photos, and gives you the option to search for images (or text) within images.

It is unclear- do you upload your photos to the site to have Riya download them, or do you download the Riya application? And although they have similar functions, is the “Like” application on Riya’s home page affiliated with the site? Is it advertising?