Yahoo Flickr Images: Does Search Work?
August 31, 2014
I think you know the answer if you are a regular reader of Beyond Search.
Nope.
Finding images is a tedious and time consuming business. I know what the marketing collateral and public relations noise suggests. One can search by photographer, color, yada, yada.
The reality is that finding an image requires looking at images. Some find this fun, particularly if the client is paying by the hour for graphic expertise. For me, image search underscores how primitive information retrieval tools are.
Feel free to disagree.
To test Yahoo Flickr search, navigate to “Welcome to the Internet Archive to the the Commons.” Check out the sample entry to the millions of public domain images.
Darned meaty.
To search the “Commons”, one has to navigate to the Commons page and scroll down to the search box highlighted in yellow in this screenshot:
Enter a query like this one “18th century elocution.”
Here’s what the system displayed:
I then tried this query “london omnibus 1870”.
Here’s what the system displayed:
No omnibuses.
Like many image retrieval systems, the user has to fiddle with queries until images are spotted by manual inspection.
The archive is useful. Finding images in Yahoo Flickr remains a problem for me. I thought Xooglers knew quite a bit about search. You know: Finding information when the user enters a key word or two.
Stephen E Arnold, August 31, 2014
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