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Images are the Natural Evolution of Search
By Ross Dunn (c) 2008

Over the past couple years it has been impossible to avoid the
buzz about images and their increasing role in search; such as
universal search which is becoming commonplace among the major
search engines. But universal search is only the most prevalent
news and only the baby-steps of a new format of search that is
about to take over the Internet. Do I have your interest piqued?
I will now lay the foundation of my statement to hopefully get
you as excited as I am about this unstoppable search evolution.

Evidence 1) Photosynth
If you have any technology mavens as friends it is likely you
saw this incredible video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s-DqZ8jAmv0)
presented by Microsoft at the TED conference last year discussing
Photosynth. To quote Microsoft Lab's Photosynth home page
(http://labs.live.com/photosynth/) this software

  "takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object,
   analyzes them for similarities, and then displays the photos
   in a reconstructed three-dimensional space, showing you how
   each one relates to the next. In our collections, you can
   access gigabytes of photos in seconds, view a scene from
   nearly any angle, find similar photos with a single click,
   and zoom in to make the smallest detail as big as your
   monitor."

My jaw still hurts from hitting the ground after my first
viewing of Photosynth many months ago. This software made a
massive impression on me that has led me to many interesting
ideas on the applications for this software; I will leave these
thoughts to another time. For now, however, lets just say that
the advent of a technology such as Photosynth provided a first
glimpse into how images on the web can play a far greater role
than ever imagined.

Evidence 2) PicLens (http://www.piclens.com/site/firefox/win/)
by cooliris
PicLens is a fantastic plugin that allows searchers to navigate
a 3d gallery of images associated with the topic they are
searching. The user can also surf related images by simply
clicking on a small play icon that appears on images anywhere in
their browser (the icon appears on the image when the user's
mouse hovers over it for a moment). So where does PicLens get
its content from? PicLens has complete access to the image
caches of: Google, Yahoo, Flickr, SmugMug, Photobucket and
DeviantArt.

This free, incredibly useful software is available now
(http://www.piclens.com/site/firefox/win/) and it represents a
new way for the masses to think about search; instead of showing
information in a ranking format, PicLens makes browsing images
as simple as a flick of your mouse (momentum will actually allow
the images to move by). Right now PicLens is naturally designed
for images but who says it needs to stay that way?

Evidence 3) SearchMe (http://www.searchme.com/)
When my colleague showed me the preview of SearchMe I knew I
had the linchpin for this very article. SearchMe is a new search
engine in private Beta at the moment but this next generation
search engine has finally married image search in a manner that
will get many tongues wagging.

As this video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsGR5HP2ffw)
outlines in detail SearchMe allows searchers to type in a search
and then define the intended topic of their search in order to
provide the most relevant results. Once the user selects their
topic they are provided with a slick but simple page showing
pictures of each resulting web page that can be scanned through
in a manner similar to PicLens.

Now these are not images in a classic sense, since they are
actually just screenshots of the existing web pages, however,
the technology is extremely similar and it seems natural that
the final version of SearchMe's image search option would
utilize the same technology.

Tying it all Together
What is the one thing that all of these concepts have in common?
The answer is marvelously simple; they all focus on the simple
concept that a picture is worth a thousand words. Why show a
snippet of content in a search engine result page when a complete
image could say so much more about the destination?

Are You Excited Yet?
So are we on the same page now? Are you as fascinated as I am
with the next generation of search? If not, you had better get
on board quickly; there is no doubt in my mind that image-based
searching is the natural evolution of search. Don't get me wrong,
on page content will still play a large role in algorithms but
the days of top 10 results are numbered.

What Will this Mean to SEO?
Basically a few existing elements of search engine optimization
will become more important:

  1. Web pages will have to be designed with a tighter focus
     on usability and simplicity for screenshots to appear
     interesting/relevant enough to click on.
  2. Images will always need to be appropriately tagged and
     described.
  3. Web site images will have to be picked with more care from
     stock photography sites in order to capture the eyes of
     image-surfing prospects.
  4. SEOs will find it useful to include sales-oriented
     information in images but not at the expense of the image.
  5. Content around images and the overall page text must be
     extremely relevant to the image and the description and
     tags that are attributed to it.

In short, the evolution of search will continue to do what it
has always done; make us all work harder to provide better
quality content. One thing is for certain... the evolution of
search just makes search engine optimization services
(http://www.stepforth.com/) interesting and necessary in order
to maintain search success in multiple search environments.
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Ross Dunn is the CEO and Founder of StepForth Web Marketing Inc.;
based in Victoria, BC, Canada and founded in 1997. You can read
more of Ross's articles and those of the StepForth team at
http://news.stepforth.com or contact us at http://www.stepforth.com/,
Tel: 250-385-1190, Toll Free: 877-385-5526, Fax: 250-385-1198
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