Google-photos – Search public images in Google Photos

google-photosgoogle-pluspicasa-web-albumssearch

On Picasa Web Album, I can search all public photos via the explore features, for instance a search by tag: https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/view?feat=tags&psc=G&filter=0&tags=wikimania

(Note, Google is hiding such features more and more in an attempt to force people to use other services. If at some point in the URL gets redirected elsewhere, see how it looks currently.)

How do I do the same on Google Photos? https://photos.google.com/search/wikimania only finds my own photos with the word.

Google Plus doesn't provide a side access either: https://plus.google.com/s/wikimania/photos only finds (very few) posts with photos, while I only want the photos themselves and all of them.

There are other questions about searching posts and searching own photos. I also asked elswewhere how to mark and search Creative Commons images.

Best Answer

Short answer

At this time Google Photos doesn't include a feature for searching public photos and searching only photos in Google+ isn't not available at this time.

Explanation

Google Photos, Google Plus Photos and Picasa Web Albums are three different services. They could have some similar features but not all are the same. I.E. Albums created in Google+ or Picasa Web Albums could be find in Google Photos, but Google Photos search doesn't include a searching of photos shared by other publicly.

Google announcements

AFAIK Google didn't announce yet any plan regarding the retirement of Picasa Web Albums. Actually, they removed the automatically redirection from http://picasaweb.google.com to http://plus.google.com/photos but now, the last automatically redirects to http://photos.google.com.

It's worth to say that Google+ Photos will be shut down, starting on August 1st, 2015.

Alternatives

Use https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/view?q=soccer just replace soccer by the your search terms.
Use http://images.google.com

Remarks

AFAIK Picasa Web Albums search engine and Google Images don't use the same index nor algorithms.

References

The list of all albums

Executed on the page https://photos.google.com/albums, this script returns a string that can be copy-pasted to a Google Sheet, creating a table of names and URLs.

var links = document.getElementsByTagName('A'); 
var s = ''; 
for (var i = 0; i< links.length; i++) {
  if (/\b(album|share)\b/.test(links[i].href)) {
    var albumName = links[i].children[3].children[0].innerText;
    s = s + albumName + '\t' + links[i].href + '\n';
  }
}

The list of shared albums

Executed on the page https://photos.google.com/shared, this script returns the list of album names and URLs.

var links = document.getElementsByTagName('A'); 
var s = ''; 
for (var i = 0; i< links.length; i++) {
  if (/\b(album|share)\b/.test(links[i].href)) {
    s = s + links[i].innerText + '\t' + links[i].href + '\n';
  }
}

The URLs are in the long format: https://photos.google.com/share/...?key=..., not in the short format https://goo.gl/photos/... that you would get by clicking the share button. But they are functionally equivalent: the latter redirects to the former after going through Google's URL shortening service goo.gl. If length is a concern, you can shorten them yourself within Google Sheets by using an Apps Script for generating goo.gl URLs.

Best Answer

Short answer

Explanation

Google announcements

Alternatives

Remarks

References

Related Solutions

Google-photos – How to change image size using direct image url in Picasa Web Album

Google-photos – How to get a list of albums in Google Photos

The list of all albums

The list of shared albums

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