In a suite of announcements today -- including how real time search will look in results -- the new photo search product Google Goggles has plenty to get the traveller excited.

The new product has a limited release on Android-powered mobiles at present but is essentially a photo recognition system which allows users to send a snap from their phones to Google and receive information back about it.

Sounds simple -- and it is.

For example, users can take a picture of a famous landmark and then see almost instantly the usual text results from Google organic search for that item.

Another interesting feature is the product’s ability to return quick descriptions of shops, restaurants and other venues in a street, based on the GPS geo-coding features within the handsets.

Here is the launch video from Google:

A bit limited initially by its Androidness, Goggles however clearly has the potential to open up some wonderful possibilities for on-the-move search and functionality.

And its launch, alongside the ongoing development of Microsoft’s PhotoSynth image aggregating and 3D display system, means that the search engines are (finally?) getting to grips with how to visualise the search experience.

For a start, the smart trip planning sites will hopefully work out ways of integrating the functionality into their in-resort content services, perhaps by throwing the Google search API into their own systems and returning more detailed and accurate results.

In fact, any content service could be greatly enhanced by such functionality and it also allows for some arguably more important elements of the travel experience to be dealt with in an efficient way.

Tour operators could use the system to help customers if they are lost or simply having trouble identifying a location.

And this all leads rather nicely into Google Wave.

Wave’s ability to thread conversations and imagery means that Goggles will add a nice on-the-move element to the fledgling service which many have struggled to get to grips with so far.

Finally, from a commercial perspective (Google doesn’t do much purely for the love of it), the service will probably give a boost to paid-for search results around landmark keywords.

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