Search engine giant Google is setting out to alter the way it offers users access to safe shopping online by integrating the ability to buy products directly from within its image-seeking service.

Of course, rather than handling the transactional side of this process itself, Google will instead be letting retailers and brands attach ads to certain images, with sponsored listings appearing much like they do on its standard results pages.

A test run of this service has been running for a little while now, and the intention is to roll this out on a wider scale to include more advertisers and users over the course of the rest of the year.

Clearly, the most relevant image search terms will be targeted with ads, while those that are less related to specific products will not be hit with any kind of image-based marketing.

Google published an explanatory blog to outline the idea behind this update, saying that it will give consumers the assistance they need to find the products they are looking for while also leading them in the direction of the sites from which they can be purchased.

Much of Google’s main revenue stream is generated through advertising, so it is no surprise that it would want to include this in as many parts of its search services as possible.

It also hopes that the feature will allow users to encounter products that would otherwise have been off their radar.

This move may also come as a means of making it more likely that shoppers will use a search engine when seeking out particular products rather than heading straight to retail sites. Amazon’s dominance in this space means that it often supersedes Google for initial searches in many parts of the world, including the UK.