A similar image search apparatus includes a storage unit, a search unit, a text feature selection unit, an image feature transformation unit and a similar image search unit. The storage unit stores images and pieces of text information associated with the respective images. The search unit retrieves candidate images. Each candidate image has a similar image feature to a image feature of a key image. The text feature selection unit select a text feature of the respective candidate images which satisfies a given selecting condition. The image feature transformation unit, base on the selected text feature, transforms the image features. The similar image search unit retrieves similar images from the candidate images based on the transformed image features. The image features of the similar images are similar to the image feature of the key image.