Searchips Search By Image for WooCommerce

Searchips Search By Image for WooCommerce is a visual search tool that allows customers to search for visually similar products by uploading or taking photos directly on your shop pages.

The plugin offers two search strategies: 1. Multimodal Vector Embeddings: Matches visual features using advanced machine learning models via OpenRouter. 2. Vision-to-Text Description Search: Analyzes images to generate descriptive keyword search queries using a vision language model.

External Services

This plugin connects to the OpenRouter API to perform image-based searches and catalog indexing using artificial intelligence models.

• What the service is and what it is used for: OpenRouter (https://openrouter.ai) is an external API service used to generate vector embeddings (for visual similarity search) or image descriptions (for vision-to-text search) from product and query images.
• What data is sent and when: Base64-encoded image data and request parameters are sent to OpenRouter’s servers when a store administrator manually runs the product indexer or when products are updated (if auto-indexing is triggered), and when a customer uploads or captures an image to perform a visual search on the frontend.
• Terms of service and privacy policy: This service is provided by OpenRouter. You can read their Terms of Service at https://openrouter.ai/terms and their Privacy Policy at https://openrouter.ai/privacy.

Features

• Search Strategies: Toggle between Vector Embeddings (visual similarity) and Vision-to-Text (semantic descriptions) searches.
• Camera Search Trigger: Automatically enqueued inside theme search forms or loaded via shortcode [tsbifw_search_bar].
• Sleek Frontend UI: Drag-and-drop modal uploader featuring real-time scanning animations.
• Client-Side Image Cropping: Let users crop images before searching.
• Asynchronous Indexing: Real-time batch processing indexer with Pause/Stop controls.
• Custom Thresholds: Configure similarity percentage requirements to control search strictness.
• Log Viewer: View database logs for API requests, settings changes, and queries.
• Database Logging & Retention: Automated cleanups of diagnostic logs.
• Automatic Re-indexing: Triggers background re-indexing when featured or gallery images change.

How-To and Setup

1. Setting Up the API Connection

Go to WooCommerce -> Search by Image. Paste your OpenRouter API Key in the field. You can use the visibility toggle to confirm the key is input correctly without trailing spaces.

2. Running the Product Indexer

Navigate to the “Product Indexer” tab. Choose whether to index featured images, gallery images, or both. Click “Start Indexing”. You can pause or stop the process at any time.

3. Adding the Search Bar via Shortcode

Insert the shortcode [tsbifw_search_bar] in any post, page, or widget template to display the camera trigger search bar.

4. Customizing Trigger Styles

Use the “Styling” settings tab to configure position properties, size, and background colors using the WordPress color picker UI.

Help and Support

• API Authentication Issues: Ensure your API key is correct and active on OpenRouter.
• Skipped Products: Products with missing or zero-byte image files are skipped to avoid database error loops.
• Cron Indexing: Enable background cron indexing to process product updates automatically in the background.