Google has updated its Images search page, adding navigation tweaks and a new advertising tool for marketers. As far as the layout goes, you’ll notice the space is more efficiently used to fit more images on a single page. Page-scrolling and hover-over thumbnail previews have been added, and clicking through an image result brings you to a new landing page complete with the website for context.

Google has also upgraded its recommendations, making improvements around Similar Images and Colors. To refine your search, you can use more specific search terms to get better results. Google has taken previous image search data to build relevance around queries, letting you hone in on the details you really need.

For the advertising bit, the new Image Search Ads let brands market specifically to Google Images. The ads include a thumbnail image alongside your lines of text (more). A bit of camouflaging it seems, but an interesting way to carve new channels through marketing terrain. The use of images themselves becomes more pertinent, as mobile devices generate more opportunities to use images in our regular interactions. You can share an image on Twitter and Facebook, via text message, across mobile apps, to a bookmarking site or through an email.

Google’s well aware of the growing importance of contextual images, as it offers mobile tools on its Android platform for launching searches from a photo taken with your camera. Search will become more visual, and marketers will be ready and willing to take full advantage of that trend.

As it pertains to mobile search, images will be extremely important for things like data repurposing and augmented reality apps–potentially powerful marketing tools. Flipboard, for example, is taking socially shared and searched data and turning it into an image-centric publication customized for every user. Yelp is taking to augmented reality to display contact details and reviews for a venue standing right before you.

Google Ventures is making investments in other areas of search, leading the C round of funding for Tradea. The round brought another $5.75 for the search engine start-up. Taking a semantic approach to crowd-sourced paid search marketing, Tradea is designed for businesses and enterprises to run campaigns across Google, Bing and Yahoo!. From PE Hub,

“By leveraging the skills of hundreds of the world’s best paid search experts, Trada enables time-strapped business owners and marketers to eliminate the hassle and cost of managing a paid search campaign in-house. In turn, Trada’s paid search experts work collaboratively and competitively on behalf of the business owners. Compensation is earned on a performance basis by generating profitable clicks and conversions for less than the businesses’ stated budgets.”