Yahoo! Revamps Image Search; Image Search Roundup

I use image search nearly every day. When someone brings up something I’ve never seen before, I usually end up looking for the image on Google’s image search. When I upload a post, I usually try to have at least one visual to go with it. Google ends up being my default search engine. Since I use Google Chrome a whole lot now, it’s easy to go into the address bar and start typing “images.google.com”. Before I even get to the letter a in “images”, I can hit the TAB key and type in my search term. It’s just more convenient than having to visit the image search page every time. However, there is still a problem that the Yahoo! image search solves. This means that I might have to start using the Yahoo! search a little more. I hate, after clicking a photo, having to toggle back to the search results and then back and forth to the preview pane. Instead of showing just that one image you’ve clicked in the preview pane, it will also more image results, more image results, and a search box. This will take out the pain of hitting that back button over and over again. It’ll make searching for and actually finding that image so much easier. Very handy. Oh, and like Google, Yahoo! has also introduced search suggestions. Looks like the Yahoo! Image search will definitely top Google’s, at least for the time being. I like. As a matter of fact, I think in all of my following posts I’ll be taking advantage of Yahoo’s awesome search. Take a look at Yahoo’s blog post on this topic here.

Now that we’ve gotten Yahoo’s updates out of the way, let’s go visit some other image searches that I’ve used or discovered along the way. This is by no means a complete list, but it’s a start. Visual, in my opinion, is the way to go. It’s such much easier and the more aesthetically pleasing and user friendly a search engine is, the more I’m drawn to it. The list I have is just a couple of services I’ve come across. I’ll give you my opinion on them, but I urge you to try them out for yourself and see which one fits you. Cheers.

1) Live.com: Live is brought to you by Microsoft and has an excellent search feature for images. It has a sidebar on the left hand side that shows you other image results, similar to Yahoo’s. Live.com’s site is not as aesthetically pleasing as Yahoo’s, but one interesting feature that I liked from Live.com is the ability to “show similar images”. This can come in useful when you are looking for the same image with a better quality or if you’re looking for a larger version of it.

2) Pixsy: I discovered this nifty little search engine a while back, but never brought myself to use it much. Don’t get me wrong. It’s an excellent resource, but with so many ways to search for images, there will always be engines that you won’t use as often as you’d like to. Pixsy does have a limited number of image results at the top, too. Not much else to say.

3) Viewzi: Back in July of 2008, I posted a blog post on Viewzi and my thoughts on it. Since then, it has come out of Beta, or at least I think so. It’s still an amazing search tool and I still use it a whole bunch. Think every type of search you can think off and different ways to interpret and represent that search data. That is how I would describe Viewzi. It’s a whole new level of searching for things. It can turn your search for “lemonade” into something beautiful and something amazingly complex. You can try it for yourself, but let me tell you this. Here are just a couple of views you can see your results in: web screenshot, simple text, viddler videos, power grid, google timeline, site information, video x3, photo tag cloud, photos, 4 sources, viewzi news, everyday shopping, songs, albums, weather, and a whole bunch more. I love it. Have fun and enjoy!

4) Searchme: Oh la la. Now we come to Searchme! I did a post about it in July of ‘08 too and here is the original post. Since then, it’s been evolving. It’s one thing to give a list of results, but it’s another actually present this information in an effective and intuitive way so people can better utilize this information. That’s what Searchme does in a nutshell. It helps you categorize your search and find the information you need instantly. Don’t take it from me, go take a look at it yourself. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

5) Ginipic: It’s not actually a website, but it’s actually an application. With it, you can search image search engines, photo sharing sites, and your own files all at the same time. I downloaded it and used it a couple of times. It’s an awesome tool and if you are on a constant search for useable images, this is definitely a great application have around. All you have to do is input a search term and search places like Flickr, Google, Yahoo!, SmugMug, deviantART, Facebook, Picasa, and Live search, preview the images and drag and drop to save. Simple, easy, effective.

6) Cooliris: This isn’t a website or an application. Cooliris is a plugin for your browser: currently for Explorer, Firefox and Safari, that will revolutionize your image viewing experience. You view photos in a 3D wall that you can scroll through. You can zoom in or zoom out and when you come to a picture you like, just click it to see it up close and click once more to zoom back to the wall. Aesthetically, it’s awesome. Its also simple to use and now you can even browse Facebook photos and your computer photos. Cheers!