In December 2001, Google announced Google Images, which allows users to search the web for image content. The keywords for the image search are based on the filename of the image, the link text pointing to the image, and text adjacent to the image. When searching for an image, a thumbnail of each matching image is displayed. Then when clicking on a thumbnail, the image is displayed in a frame at the top of the page and the website on which that image was found is displayed in a frame below it, making it easier to see from where the image is coming.

Image Labeler

Google Image Labeler is a new feature of Google Image Search that allows the user to label random images to help improve the quality of Google's image search results.

The user will be randomly paired with a partner who is online and using the feature. Over a 90-second period, the user and his partner will be shown the same set of images and asked to provide as many labels as possible to describe each image you see. When the user's label matches his partner's label, the user will earn points and move on to the next image until time runs out. After time expires, the user can explore the images he had seen, the websites where those images were found, as well the tooltips (by hovering over with the mouse on the images) that their partner entered as labels. Google is betting on users' competitiveness to rack up high scores to swell the number of images ranked.

This is not designed simply for fun. Though the feature is enjoyable for the users, it is also a clever way for Google to ensure that its keywords are matched to correct images. Each matched word will help Google to build a accurate database used when using the Google Image Search.

See also

• Picsearch
• Yahoo Image Search

External links

• Google Image Search website
• Google Image Labeler Beta