web search | Blog about business and product management

Nobody promised anything, but if you have an image search function it better produce some meaningful results. Since Google Images somehow managed to get blocked at the place where I am sitting right now (probably doing too good finding what you’re not supposed to be looking at), I use Yahoo Image search for blog posts.

Boy, is that a sad picture. No matter what I am looking for, Yahoo Images just dumps dozens of result pages from Flickr. If you run a search for “microsoft commercial“, guess what would you see on pages 2 to 16? A whole bunch of images of military airplanes and helicopters – all from Flickr. Only starting at page 16 there are some easily recognizeable Microsoft-related images.

Given that Flickr is blocked here as well, it’s just an exercise in futility to find any sort of images. But this was worth mentioning, because if it wasn’t for a problem with Google Images I would’ve never thought there is really no alternative.

And you thought Yahoo was doing a good job too, right?

Thanks to Google Trends we can now know the power of Internet users’ will. Take a look at the last 30 days trends chart. While search terms “porn” and “mp3” dominate the chart, the “super bowl” is on the rise but still way too low.

I tried to include the search term “fashion show”, since there is one under way in New York, but it just hugged the bottom and didn’t produce any significant flows on this chart.

My guess (or guesstimate) is that both “porn” and “mp3” are too broad terms, therefore they are sought more often and produce more meaningful results. In case of “super bowl” or “fashion show” – latter being even more obvious – there’s only a handful of web sites that provide fulfilling and concise information on the subject. Actually, fashion show addicts are either glued to TVs or to the doors of many New York locations where shows are held.