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Problems with Roll20's "Powered by Google" Image Search

Simply put, it seems that the Image Search feature in Roll20 has been broken for several months now.   I've been running Shattered Star now for over a year, and in the past, I've been able to find whatever tokens I need for the various NPC's.  However, sometime around January or so, I started noticing search results were far less reliable, to the point that the feature is almost completely worthless now.  Now I have to find the specific images I need outside of Roll20 and then add them into my campaign.  This takes extra storage space, but more importantly it slows down adventure preparation a fair bit, especially if I need to improvise and add something into the game quickly.

Anybody have any thoughts about this?  Was there a change or announcement that I missed as to why it's working differently these last few months?
June 08 (9 years ago)

Edited June 08 (9 years ago)
Gen Kitty
Forum Champion
This is a known bug.  Previously, the Devs said:

Google changed the way their search APIs work, which really messed up our "not-roll20 specifically" internet searches. We are currently looking for a better way to do these searches, but so far haven't found anything that would be any better than what we have now. You can always search through google and upload the images yourself if you're not finding anything through the in-app search. Sorry it's not great now, it's just as annoying for all of us too and we would love to be able to fix it, but there's not an easy answer for that issue at this time.

And elsewhere in a discussion:

We are keeping an eye on it, but currently there are no better tools being offered. If ever these tools become available, we will jump at the chance to update the current system.

Thanks for the reply, I had a hunch it was something that Google changed.  I'm not an expert on the topic, but out of curiosity, did it have anything to with the change from Google's, "Web Search API" to the "Custom Search API", or something else?