The Art Genome Project's search technology is the product of an ongoing art-historical study — undertaken by a team of contributors with art-historical backgrounds at Artsy — seeking to define the characteristics which distinguish and connect works of art, architecture, ancient artifacts and design.

[citation needed] Its primary aim is to provide Artsy users dynamic search categories and explain similarities among art and artists.

Currently, there are over 1000 "genes" (i.e., attributes of art) in the project's taxonomy, including art-historical movements, subject matter, and formal qualities.

It also enables similarity to be expressed in a more nuanced way[citation needed] than it might be with just tags because one can weigh various attributes of an artist or work of art to establish which might be the most or less important.

[7][8] Both aim to create comprehensive (though by no means exhaustive) analyses of types of art by identifying a set of criteria, which both call "genes".

Unlike other types of classification, The Art Genome's taxonomy was designed for the purposes of establishing similarities between artists and artworks.

"[11] Importantly, The Art Genome Project does incorporate over 6000 tags for content (iconography) in artwork as well as certain materials and mediums, which do not need the nuance of genes.

The Art Genome is another way of creating serendipitous connections.’"[14] Jonathan Olivares praised The Art Genome’s comprehensiveness, objectivity and ability to accommodate future revisions: "Unlike books, which can only be modified between editions, the website is made of millions of layers of edits that can be reworked at any time… [and] unlike the opinionated and subjectively ordered history book, this neutral and re-configurable database will allow us to access any work of art or design, within any imaginable order, and instantly.