Yahoo Expands Image Search, Transformed Queries

Yahoo announced in its search blog recently ( http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000083.html) that they've expanded Yahoo images and added a bit to its functionality.

The first thing to note is that Yahoo Images ( http://images.yahoo.com ) now has over 1.5 billion images in its index (looks like Google Images has about 1.1 billion images.)

In an attempt to make this more navigable they've added a couple of features. The first is an "Also Try" feature. If you've ever noticed the search suggestions that Yahoo provides, these are the same thing only for images. Try doing a search for Shrek and you'll get results, but at the top of the results you'll also other search possibilities, including "shrek 2" "shrek donkey", "shrek wallpaper", etc.

The second feature is called "transformed query", which you could either consider as a kind of natural language searching, or as implicit special syntax. You can add words that will transform your query, without having to use a rigid syntax. You can impact color:

black and white pictures of omar sharif
color pictures of icebergs

As well as size:

small pictures of microbes
large images of elephants
wallpaper of wildflowers
wallpaper wallpaper

In all these cases Yahoo will inform you that they've altered your query and give you the option to rern the query without the transformed query feature.

I like these. Somehow image search still isn't quite as easy/useful to me as text search, though -- I've long wanted a special syntax to search ALT tags. I'd like some kind of date feature so we can see new images added in -- can you imagine reading about the imminent PSP launch from Sony, and being able to see new PSP images as they're added to the image index? That would also give you a good sense of how "fresh" the index is.

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