Live Image Search advances

Posted By: Larry Larsen | Apr 30th, 2007 @ 2:46 PM | 11,857 Views | 8 Comments

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The image search team at Microsoft deserves a day off, the latest release of enhancements really sets Live Search apart from the others. But don't take my word for it, here, try it for yourself. Go ahead and image search "Red Roses" using Live Search, Yahoo! Image Search, and Google Images. I'll wait here.

All the images in the Live Search have been given a uniform size, making it cleaner looking and easier to scan the large number of images. There is an image resize slider to allow you to dynamically control how big the pictures are in the page (mousing over the image results gives you a bigger version and details), and there is a scratchpad where you can drag pictures to hold on to.

One of the biggest things setting Live Search apart from other engines is that the results come back on one page. That's right, scroll down to where you would find the next page link on other search engines. Notice that Live Search just keeps giving you more images to view.

What you may not notice is that the team has sped up the rendering of the page, it now increases the speed of your experience by 44% on average. Another big improvement was in the adult filtering, which uses skin and face detection as well as some shape detection techniques (which leads me to wonder what shapes they are looking for.)

The image search team also greatly enhanced relevance. This is most noticable in searches for things like celebrity pictures. Check out this search of Hillary Duff. Where other image search engines start breaking down into images of Hillary's purse, MTV page graphics, and the layout of the venues she plays, Live Search stays on task, delivering you just the pictures of the celebrity you are looking for. Of course, if you are really interested in Hillary purses, you can always just search for that.

Tag: Live Search

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