Description
VSW – Visual Search for WooCommerce adds powerful visual product search and image search to your WooCommerce store. Let shoppers upload a product photo, crop the image, and instantly discover visually similar products from your WooCommerce catalog.
Instead of searching for the right product name or keyword, customers can simply search by image. VSW analyzes the uploaded image and matches it with your store’s indexed product images to display relevant and visually similar products.
VSW is designed for WooCommerce stores that want to make product discovery faster, easier, and more intuitive.
Created by Awais Awan.
Search WooCommerce Products by Image
Let customers find products using the images they already have.
Customers can:
Upload an image from their device.
Take a photo using a supported mobile camera.
Drag and drop an image.
Crop the image before searching.
Search for visually similar products.
Select product categories.
Filter results by price, stock status, and product attributes.
Open matching products directly from search results.
Powerful Visual Search for WooCommerce
VSW is built specifically for WooCommerce and supports visual matching across your product catalog.
Key features include:
Visual Product Search – Find WooCommerce products using an uploaded image.
Search by Image – Allow customers to search for products using a photo instead of keywords.
WooCommerce Image Search – Discover products using product images.
Similar Product Search – Display products that are visually similar to the customer’s uploaded image.
Product Featured Images – Index WooCommerce product featured images for visual matching.
Product Gallery Images – Include gallery images to improve visual search results.
Variation Image Support – Support WooCommerce product variation images.
Mobile Camera Support – Allow customers to take product photos directly from compatible mobile devices.
Image Cropping – Let customers select the most relevant part of an uploaded image.
Category Filtering – Search within selected WooCommerce product categories.
Price Filtering – Filter visual search results by price range.
Stock Filtering – Help customers find products that are currently available.
Attribute Filtering – Filter results using WooCommerce global product attributes.
Similarity Results – Display products based on visual similarity.
Floating Search Button – Add an image-search button to your storefront.
Multiple Search Layouts – Choose from available visual-search form layouts.
Shortcode Support – Add visual search anywhere using a shortcode.
Gutenberg Support – Add the visual search form using the WordPress block editor.
Elementor Support – Add visual search to Elementor-powered WooCommerce pages.
Custom Styling – Customize the visual-search interface to match your website.
Analytics – Monitor visual-search activity and product interactions.
CSV Export – Export available visual-search analytics.
How Visual Search Works
Upload an image – The customer uploads a product photo or takes a picture.
Crop the image – The customer can crop the image to focus on the product they want.
Visual matching – The image is processed by the configured visual-search service.
Find similar products – The system compares the search image with indexed WooCommerce product images.
Display results – Relevant and visually similar products are displayed.
Continue shopping – Customers can open products directly from the visual search results.
WooCommerce Product Image Indexing
VSW can index multiple images from your WooCommerce catalog to improve visual product matching.
Supported image sources can include:
Product featured images
Product gallery images
Product variation images
Indexing multiple product images can help customers discover products from different angles, colors, styles, and product variations.
Add Visual Search Anywhere
You can add the VSW visual search form using the shortcode:
[vswvisef_visual_search]
You can place the shortcode on:
WooCommerce shop pages
Product pages
Landing pages
Search pages
Custom WordPress pages
Elementor layouts
Widget areas
Other supported WordPress locations
VSW also provides Gutenberg block support for an easier visual editor experience.
Mobile-Friendly Image Search
Visual search is designed to work across desktop and mobile devices.
Mobile shoppers can upload an existing image or use their device camera to search for visually similar WooCommerce products.
This makes VSW particularly useful for customers who discover products while browsing social media, websites, catalogs, or physical stores.
Useful for Many WooCommerce Stores
VSW can be useful for a wide range of WooCommerce businesses, including:
Fashion and clothing stores
Furniture stores
Home décor stores
Jewelry and accessories stores
Electronics stores
Flooring and tile stores
Automotive parts stores
Beauty and lifestyle stores
Sports and outdoor stores
Large WooCommerce product catalogs
Stores with many product variations
If your customers know what a product looks like but don’t know its name, visual search can provide a faster way to discover it.
External Service
VSW uses the Visual Search Cloud service for image feature extraction and visual product matching.
The connection to the external service is explicitly approved by the store administrator before catalog or search data is sent.
During catalog indexing, the service may receive product image data and related WooCommerce product information required to create visual-search indexes.
During a customer visual search, the service receives the uploaded or cropped search image and the information required to return matching products.
The hosted service processes images in memory and does not retain shopper-uploaded images or shopper filenames for analytics.
Please review the service’s Terms and Privacy Policy and ensure that your website’s privacy policy accurately explains how images and related data are processed.
Privacy
VSW does not add third-party advertising or advertising trackers to your storefront.
Visual-search analytics are designed to be privacy-conscious and focus on information such as:
Search activity
Search result counts
Response performance
Product interactions
Aggregate visual-search usage
Store administrators are responsible for ensuring that their site’s privacy policy explains how customer-uploaded images are processed when using the external visual-search service.
Performance
VSW is designed to work with WooCommerce stores containing large product catalogs.
Product image indexing is separated from the customer-facing search experience so that indexed product images can be used for subsequent visual searches.
For large catalogs, server resources and indexing performance may depend on the number of products, product images, hosting environment, and configured visual-search service.
Privacy
Store owners should disclose that product images and customer-selected search images are sent to their configured visual-search service. The plugin does not add third-party advertising or tracking scripts. Search-result click tracking is limited to product IDs and a random search identifier.
Screenshots



Blocks
This plugin provides 1 block.
- VSW – Visual Search Let shoppers upload a photo to find visually similar WooCommerce products.
Installation
- Install and activate WooCommerce.
- Upload and activate VSW – Visual Search for WooCommerce.
- Open WooCommerce > Visual Search.
- Connect your hosted visual-search account.
- Wait for the first catalogue index to complete.
- Add
[vswvisef_visual_search]to a page or insert the VSW – Visual Search block.
FAQ
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Does the plugin store customer search images?
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No. The included Laravel service processes customer images in memory. It stores aggregate search status, response duration, result counts, categories, product clicks, and failure reasons, but not uploaded images, filenames, or IP addresses.
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Does the plugin require an external account?
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Yes. Connect the plugin to your VSW – Visual Search SaaS account. Subscription plans control hosted catalogue and monthly-search limits.
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Does it index gallery and variation images?
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Yes. Each product is ranked using its strongest featured, gallery, variation, or local-region match.
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What image types can shoppers upload?
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JPG, PNG, and WebP images up to 5 MB.
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Do I need a separate Pro add-on?
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No. Floating search, presets, Elementor integration, custom labels, and analytics exports are included in this plugin. SaaS usage is controlled by the selected subscription plan.
Reviews
There are no reviews for this plugin.
Contributors & Developers
“VSW – Visual Search for WooCommerce” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.
ContributorsTranslate “VSW – Visual Search for WooCommerce” into your language.
Interested in development?
Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.
Changelog
2.0.5
- Renamed plugin-owned identifiers with the distinct
vswvisefprefix, added legacy option migration, and included readable asset sources for WordPress.org review.
2.0.4
- Clarified the hosted-service model and added direct service Terms and Privacy Policy links for WordPress.org review.
2.0.3
- Added complete author metadata and completed the WordPress.org release-package audit.
2.0.2
- Resolved Plugin Check security, internationalization, hook-prefix, filesystem, and metadata findings.
2.0.1
- Improved spacing, labels, and responsive layout for custom-label and floating-search settings.
2.0.0
- Consolidated every former Pro add-on feature into the main plugin; SaaS subscriptions are now the only paid layer.
1.10.0
- Removed recurring catalogue sync and product-save indexing; indexing now starts once during setup or manually.
1.9.0
- Added a clear plan comparison and usage-based subscription recommendation.
1.8.0
- Simplified onboarding with a built-in hosted service URL and a polished connection workflow.
1.7.1
- Display the correct PayPal sandbox or live-payment status in WooCommerce settings.
1.7.0
- Replaced Stripe controls with secure PayPal subscription approval and cancellation.
1.6.2
- Prepared the free plugin package and service/privacy documentation for WordPress.org review.
1.6.1
- Added unique crop-dialog identifiers for pages containing multiple search forms.
