1. An online search system that services both a plurality of web hosting servers and a plurality of user computing devices via an Internet, the online search system comprising: a processing infrastructure that interacts with each of the plurality of web hosting servers in a crawl related process to gather a plurality of images, the first processing infrastructure associates at least one of a plurality of image characteristic with each of the plurality of images; a communication interface through which a user interface setting and an uploaded search image are received by the processing infrastructure, the user interface setting identifying one of a first setting and a second setting; and the processing infrastructure being operable to respond to the first setting identified via the user interface setting by attempting to match the uploaded search image with each of the plurality of images, and the processing infrastructure being operable to respond to the second setting identified via the user interface setting by (i) analyzing the uploaded search image to identify at least one image characteristic, and (ii) attempting to match the at least one image characteristic with at least one of the plurality of image characteristics of the plurality of images so as to yield a group of visually similar images.