Ask Jeeves Launches Image Search

Ask Jeeves has announced that they've started their own image search engine at http://pictures.ask.com. For some things it worked really well, but for some things it was kind of disappointing.

I started my search with something basic: giraffe. The last time I searched for giraffe at Google Images I noticed there was an elephant smack in the middle of the giraffe pictures. Ask's image results contained no elephants on the front page, and more organic giraffes on the front page (no giraffe drawings, cartoons, dolls, etc.)

On other hand, I did a search for RSS button. Google had far more results, many integrated into screen shots. Ask seemed to have fewer results with less integrated into screen shots.

Ask search results contain a thumbnail of the image found, with links to information about the image (including direct image URL and URL of the page where the image was found), and the option to save the image (which apparently you can do without being logged into MyJeeves. Do they stay for the life of a cookie or a browser session?)

To the right of the search results you'll see more search options. I didn't have much use for the "Related Names" search option (related names for a search for giraffe: rabbit.) or for the Expand Your Search options (expand my search for giraffe by searching for cheetah?) but I really did like the "Narrow Your Search" options, which provided several giraffe-related searches (giraffe habitat, giraffe species, giraffe cartoon, etc.)

One thing I didn't notice was an advanced search. Hopefully Ask will add that over time -- it really does help to be able to narrow search results by size, color, filetype, etc.

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