Assignment 2: Search Engine Comparison

Intro

I chose to search for images of Absolut Vodka advertisements. These ads have become very popular since their inception in the early 1970s. There are over 1000 of them in existence. I wanted to find some of the more popular ads. These images could then be used for a variety of things: background on your computer; decoration in your room; or a nice collection of great art. The audience who would be most interested in Absolut Vodka ads would be people who enjoy the alcohol or the interesting images. Probably young adults.

I conducted three searches on three different engines (Google's image search; AltaVista's image search; and Alltheweb's picture search). I searched for "Absolut and Vodka"; "Absolut and Vodka and advertisements"; and "Absolut and Vodka and images and ads." I chose these search engines because they all offer a specific image search option. Also, they have different ways of ranking web pages (see below for an expanded explanation).

Google Image Search

Google advanced image search engine works in a similar manner to the more general Google internet search. They have implemented their own PageRank(TM) system that ranks websites based on who and how many other pages link to the individual site (“Our Search”). This helps cut down on inappropriate websites being returned from a search simply because they had similar words in their Meta tags. Also, text connected directly with an image is given more weight than text located somewhere else on the page.

As far as search features are concerned, the user can choose to search for an exact phrase, a group of words (Boolean AND), any one of a group of words (Boolean OR), or excluding words (Boolean NOT). If the user wants to, (s)he can add a size constraint to the search including: icon sized, small, medium, large, very large, or wallpaper-sized. (S)he can also limit the type of image returned to either .jpeg or .gif. (S)he can choose black and white pictures, grayscale, or full colors. One can also filter the images returned for adult content.

This search engine gave me the best results because it refined my search just as I wanted it to. My first search was too broad, and returned a lot of useless pictures. When I searched for the Absolut Vodka advertisements, I got 95 results, almost all popular ads.

AltaVista Image Search

AltaVista advanced image search (along with the standard AltaVista internet search) relates the search topic to the Meta tags embedded within each website. This can work well if the makers of the website are honest when describing what their site contains. From AltaVista’s standpoint, it is much more inexpensive to categorize websites this way than the method Google uses. Much like Google, AltaVista seeks out and assigns a higher importance to text that is connected directly to an image—either physically or via ALT tags (Entlich).

AltaVista allows the user to search with Boolean logic (AND, OR, NOT). This option is not explicitly stated like it is on the Google advance image search. (S)he also has the option of limiting the images returned to only photos, graphics, or banners/buttons—or any combination of the three. The two color choices are color or black and white (grayscale is not an option). The type of file (such as .jpeg or .gif) cannot be specified either. There is no option for filtering. The option to search the partner site, RollingStone.com along with the web is available. But this seems more like a gimmick than a feature, especially because the default setting includes it in the search criteria.

AltaVista returned a lot of applicable images, but when I refined my search, I got more and more results (many of which were not helpful). I don't know why this happened.

AllTheWeb Picture Search

AllTheWeb picture search was the third image search engine I examined. It was a tab under the general AllTheWeb.com advanced search. This engine categorizes both pages and images in a very similar method to AltaVista. The rankings are based on the Meta tags of each website, with special attention paid to the text associated with each image.

The options available for this search were the most comprehensive yet. The Boolean operators were listed under a drop down menu in the form of: “all of the words”, “any of the words”, or “the exact phrase.” This was a similar style to Google’s interface. The user could choose what image format they were searching for (.jpeg, .gif, .bmp, or any combination of the three). The color options included color, grayscale, and line art. A unique feature in this search engine was the choice of limiting the results to ones with a transparent or non-transparent background. This would be very helpful if you were intending to use the image on a colored template and didn’t want the picture’s background to interfere. There was an offensive content reduction filter option as well. There was no option to limit the size of the image, however.

This was the least helpful search engine because when I refined the search, I got zero results. But it worked for my broad search of just "Absolut Vodka."

*Images courtesy of www.eyestorm.com