A brand new search engine has launched today, offering a service that could actually be quite useful: real-time image search.
Nachofoto was created based on the observation that when people search for certain keywords, they are often hoping to find results for their search that are relevant to the day’s news. What they find with many traditional search engines, however, is generic images that have little relevance to current events. The new image search engine aims to show relevant images of trending topics and rising search terms, in real time.
For example, earlier this year, when Tiger Woods was all over the news because of a certain SUV crash, the hundreds of millions of users who searched for the keyword “Tiger Woods” on traditional search engines were likely hoping for up-to-date image results. Instead, they were returned image results from years ago.
An even more relevant example comes from typing the word “red shirts” into Google’s image search, which returns photos of actual red t-shirts. Typing the same word into Nachofoto returns photos of the Thailand Red Shirts, who have been trying to overthrow the government for the past month.
The search engine does not see itself as a competitor of the major search engines’ image searches, but rather, a compliment to them. For example, users will likely find better results for generic images they might be searching for, like “apple” or “girl with balloon,” on Google’s image search, but for current event-related photos, they are better off using Nachofoto. The search engine is not particularly interested in static keywords, and instead focuses on dynamic ones.
The search engine explains the inner workings of its real-time image search by defining four different types of image search queries. The first is static search terms (like those listed above). The second is dynamic keywords whose meaning doesn’t change but whose images undergo significant change with time. An example of this would be the Olympics, which has vastly different image results depending on the location of the events. The third type defined is dynamic keywords whose meaning and images change significantly with time. An example of this would be “9/11”. And fourthly, the last type of image search term defined is new keywords. The “iPad” is an excellent example of this.
While traditional image search engines use very little image information in the ranking of image search results, Nachofoto employs four main factors to influence its image search results: freshness factor (ie. how new is the image?), image density of a webpage (websites that interlink their photos are given higher ranking than those who don’t), inward links (websites that link internally, especially with relevant anchor text, are given higher ranking), and finally, domain authority (domains with fresh, family-friendly images are given higher priority).
With all the talk about real-time search, it’s surprising that Google’s image results remain relatively static. Perhaps Nachofoto will give Google the nudge it needs to make its image search results more relevant. And if not, at least there is a decent alternative search engine that people can use to find images relevant to the day’s events.
Kaila Krayewski is a freelance journalist with a passion for all things internet. Having worked for nearly two years as the public relations manager for an internation search engine optimization company, and publishing hundreds of articles (how-to, informational, and otherwise) on SEO, she knows a thing or two about the field. Furthermore, having just started up her own website blondetraveler.com, she is doing her best to keep one step ahead of the search engines in order to keep the traffic flowing.
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