Image Search: 1 Billion and Counting
Everyone likes big numbers, so we’re glad to announce that Yahoo Image
Search has surpassed a billion and is still growing. But
rather than brag about what an impressive achievement that is and how
the new results page sports a cleaner layout, we wanted to share some
interesting tidbits.
Where do all these images come from?
With a billion image references now in our index, it’s really interesting to break the numbers
down a bit. For example, we all know that the web is truly a global
medium. Is that reflected in the images we’ve seen?
It sure is. Images appearing in English language content now account
for only 50% of our index. All of the largest percentage gains are international.
A growing percentage of our images are from CJK (Chinese, Japanese, and Korean)
content. But the Europeans aren’t slacking either! No matter how you slice it, the increasing usage of the web in Europe and Asia really stands out in the numbers.
We also regularly pull in image results from our own media sites: news,
movies, TV, travel, sports, and so on. For example, searching for
images of Donald Trump from The Apprentice returns pictures from the popular TV show.
It’s not just about finding pretty pictures…
We all know there are a lot of people looking for pictures of Jessica
Simpson. But there are also times when using a more visual
search makes it easier to find what you’re looking for.
Earlier today, Bradley Horowitz (our director of media search)
demonstrated this. When he was looking for baseboard heater covers, he used image search. That way he could visually scan the
results very quickly to find the product he wanted.
We’re obviously proud of it. So go ahead and try it out. And keep your eyes out for new features. We’ve got ‘em coming.
Kaigene J. Jau – Multimedia Search
Jeremy Zawodny – Technical Yahoo
Image search is indeed one of the coolest things going on in search today. One is able to build an amazing collection of visual artwork by using it and collecting images. One of my favorite things to do is to do searchs and then save the amazing artwork and photographs to my hard drive and then play them on my 42″ plasma in the living room through Micrsoft’s Media Center PC while music plays in the background.
I’ve used the image searches at Google, Yahoo!, and Ask Jeeves. I find that Google’s are the best in general. One thing that I like about Google is that if you search for “large images” they tend to come up with only high res images. Yahoo comes up with high res images if you use “wallpaper” as a filter but the results are much less than from Google’s “large image” preference. If you use Yahoo’s “large image” preference which turns out as many results as Google’s, I’ve found that a lot of the images are of less than high res quality for display on my 42″ plasma in the living room. I think one way around this might be to let the user actually set the size ranking vs. using Yahoo’s pre-arragned settings where large may include some less than high res issues.
Also I would like to see a “photoblog” only filter. One of the problem with image search on all of the search engines is that their is so much crap that you have to wade through. In general, Yahoo! should try to track the high quality image sites, artistic sites, etc. and offer some kind of filter that then weeds out the everyday poor quality snapshots that litters your search. You could still get everything if you wanted but to run a search of say only registered photoblogs for New York City would turn up a more interesting mixture of photos.
How about linking the image search results with the webpages (if present) of which they (the images) are a part? Taking your “baseboard heater covers” example, once Brad found the right image, he could click the “link” below it which would take him to the webpage of that product.
Ofcourse, you could put links with the images only if the keywords associated with the image resonate with those associated with it’s webpage too. This could be extended to other format searches too like doc, pdf, etc.
I love image search, but I think it’d be great to fix the wee typo at the bottom of the page:
Take Yahoo! Image Search with you: Browse from billons of images on your phone.–>
should be “billions” (with 2 ‘l’s)
(even if the pictures are worth thousands of words a piece)
thanks!
Thank you for your feedback. The typo has been changed for the next production cycle, and you’ll see the correction displayed on the page shortly.
how do i put pictures on yahoo so when i search for it it will show what i searched for
alec howell you have to put them on a web page, then yahoo will find them.
assalamu alaykum muslim brothers and sisters i hope you enjoy my website as you my website is about how islam started also it will show you how to perform salat.
I love image search, but I think it’d be great to fix the wee typo at the bottom of the page:
Take Yahoo! Image Search with you: Browse from billons of images on your phone.–>
should be “billions” (with 2 ‘l’s)
(even if the pictures are worth thousands of words a piece)
thanks!
I am just wondering…how do you put a picture on Yahoo! Image search yourself. I want to put pictures there so people can see them too