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Seeing Is Believing Visual search engines make it simple for shoppers to find your products.

By Melissa Campanelli

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

Visual recognition and search company Riya has applied its matching technology to a new fashion shopping site called Like.com. The idea is that, when a shopper finds a fashion item he or she likes--a particular handbag or pair of shoes, for example--the search engine finds related products by examining the actual image. To get matches, users can do a keyword search, browse products or even browse items worn by celebrities.

Riya's technology works by studying one image and finding others that match it. E-tailers add their merchandise to Like.com simply by adding item images, or they can work with their affiliate networks to get listed. E-tailers are charged for Like.com's service by the click, but a few merchants use a cost-per-acquisition model.

"Like.com is very new," says Sucharita Mulpuru, a senior analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "It's unclear how it will change online shopping, but I am confident that it will be another layer retailers and comparison shopping engines will likely incorporate, if only because it's a really neat technology."