It seems as though Yahoo have been getting there house in order after the recent announcement of the much anticipated Yahoo Bing partnership agreement. Already this week we have seen the update of Yahoo owned Delicious and now, close on its heels, Flickr search has undergone a facelift.

Flickr, one of the internet’s most popular image sharing communities, has undergone an update of its search facility. The changes have been designed to improve the user experience of the site and offer more relevant results to the user. Instead of scrolling through a massive list of images, the results are now displayed in a grid formation. This simple change dramatically improves the user experience and simplifies the process of search.

 

Another new addition is the ability to filter image search results by size, although a very simple interface it does offer new value to the user. Something we particularly like is the new information feature, if you hover over an image you will see a small “i” (information icon), clicking on the icon reveals image information including the number of views, comments, date added, favourites and associated tags.

Although the changes are only small it is great to see Yahoo paying an active interest in its website assets. The changes to Flickr improve the user experience, let’s hope Yahoo’s new interest in its products continues and we start to see some exciting new features developing.

Article by Creative SEO UK

Google Images has been upgrades to include a great new set of options and filters. This great new upgrade allows image searches to be refined to much finer level, but not everyone can see it. It seems as though the update is either a new functionality test or is being rolled out slowly from data centre to data centre.

 

We tested out a search for “Eliza Dushku” using the UK version of Google Images and we are glad to say it seems to be fully working.

Images can be searched by Files size, exact size or larger than. Exact size allows you to search for an image that is a specific pixels size, allowing you to enter both the width and the height and larger than searches allows you to search for images above a pixel size allowing you to select a pixel size and ratio or a mega pixel size number.

Images can also be filtered by type including, face shots, photos, clip art and line drawing. Images can also search by colour allowing full colour, black and white or a specific colour searches. This really is an exciting update and really helps to provide great results.

Check it out for yourselves http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&rlz=1T4GGLL_en-GB&um=1&sa=1&q=eliza+dushku&aq=0&oq=eliza&aqi=g10&start=0#start=0&imgsz=2mp

Article by Creative SEO UK

Images offer a valuable addition to any content; they engage the reader and improve the user experience. It’s really important to use images as part of any blog or website in order to improve the sites visual experience but unfortunately its becoming harder and harder to find free to use images which are not under licence or protected by companies like Getty Images or Istock.

Google images offer a great resource for search and finding images based on keywords and search terms but in order to legally use any image it is necessary to find out is the image has a creative commons licence and is free to use. This can take a very long time and needs research. Most companies do not know about licensing or do not have the time to research and find the owner or licensing agent. There are many horror stories of companies who have innocently used an image from Google Images and unfortunately a few months later received a legal letter from the licensing agent requesting back licence fees. One of the worst cases we have heard of was of a blog that used an image of a celebrity as part of an article, after a lengthy legal battle they were forced to pay over £3000 to the licensing agent for the use of the image.

In order to help its users to identify if an image has a creative commons license and it free to use, Google have added a new filter to the advanced search facility on Google Images. Within the advanced image search section you will now be able to see a new option called “User Rights”. This new option allows you to filter the results to display images with creative common licenses for reuse, reuse with modification, commercial use and commercial use with modification.

“There’s some fine print, of course. This feature identifies images that are tagged with licenses that authorize reuse. You’ll still have to verify that the licensing information is accurate. We can help you take the first step towards finding these images, but we can’t guarantee that the content we linked to is actually in the public domain, or available under the license.” Taken from the Official Google Blog.

Google are offering there users a valuable addition which will prevent misuse of the service, but it is still important to remain vigilant and to verify the use of any image before publishing on your website.

Author: Creative SEO UK