As New York Fashion Week ramps up, Google’s fashion-forward designer search engine Boutiques.com is adding a few new features today. Launched last November, Boutiques.com is both a search engine for all things fashion and is a personalized storefront of boutiques curated by celebrites, stylists, and designers. Powered by Like.com’s visual search engine technology, the site allows users to create their own boutiques and receive personalized clothes and accessory recommendations based on preferences and actions.
Google says that since the site’s launch, it has been collecting data on which products are popular and “trendy” and has mined this data for designers on the site. Designer Analytics is a tool that gives retailers and designers insight into how their products are searched and shopped. Specifically, the tool will be able to show which colors and styles are most liked or hated. Designers can also see how their stats compare to similar brands. It’s similar in some ways to an analytics feature that virtual styling site Polyvore launched recently.
Shoppers can also now checkout a public version of the data, called Trend Analytics, which shows what products are most popular in terms of searches and likes on the site and in Google Search. Other enhancements include a slew of new designer boutiques and the ability for users to upload video to their own boutiques and feature a photo gallery of styles.
Boutiques.com is a radically different products than Google’s other search properties in terms of both features and its sleek, photo-centric interface; so it should be interesting to see how it performs among consumers and designers. It’s still yet to be seen if Boutiques.com can be a thriving success. The blog post states that usage of Boutiques has soared since launch but I’m curious to see the data on visits.