Image search results are obtained by providing weights to visual features to emphasize features corresponding to objects of interest while simultaneously deemphasizing irrelevant or inconsistent features that lead to poor search results. In order to minimize the impact of visual features that are unreliable or irrelevant with respect to the objects of interest in the image, context-dependent weights are provided to detect visual features such that those visual features pertaining to the objects of interest are more heavily weighted than those visual features that pertain to irrelevant or unreliable portions of the image. Visual features may be weighted for images in a searchable database. Training data may be obtained and used in weighting visual features in a query image and, alternatively, in searchable database images.