1. A method for feature matching in image recognition, comprising: obtaining a plurality of keypoints for a query image; defining a set of keypoint clusters for the query image based on keypoint distribution; establishing anchor matches for the query image by matching at least a subset of keypoints for the query image to keypoints for one or more target images, where the anchor matches are keypoints matches that are matched beyond a threshold with keypoints in one or more target images, and a keypoint match below the threshold is a partial match for the corresponding one or more target images; matching a query keypoint cluster to a target keypoint cluster based on the anchor matches for the target keypoint cluster, where keypoints that are partial matches are excluded from the query keypoint cluster during the cluster matching; and retaining keypoints, which were previously excluded from the query keypoint cluster as partial matches for purposes of cluster matching, as part of the query keypoint cluster for a subsequent geometric verification operation.