27 June 2007

Yahoo! incorporate Flickr results into Image Search results

In an effort to trump Google in the Image Search arena, Yahoo! has announced that from now on whenever a Yahoo! image search is carried out, image results from its Flickr photo sharing website will also be included amongst the normal results trawled from the web.














The new feature allows over 300 million images that have been posted and indexed on Flickr to show on relevant search results pages. The search results are displayed with a thumbnail of the image and look similar to standard image search results, aside from the inclusion of a link to the photographer's profile on Flickr underneath the image. If you see a group of photographs that you enjoy in Image Search, you can also search Yahoo! Images for the photographer's Flickr user name to display images from only that photographer.

The Yahoo! team have made sure that the newest and most relevant images from Flickr are displayed by creating a direct feed rather than using an API solution. This has been implemented so that any modifications or additions that are made to Flickr will also show up automatically on Yahoo! Image Search.

The use of a feed allows Yahoo! Images to provide better results from Flickr than Google Images. The feed provided from Flickr means that Yahoo! Images is being constantly updated in real time in order to provide the most up to the minute results.

Google, however, continues to index images from Flickr in the same way as it indexes images from every other website and as a result it is much slower to update.

This change to Image Search follows the recent trend by Yahoo! to concentrate more on expanding Flickr's services. Recently, Flickr completely replaced Yahoo!'s photos service and has also been launched in seven world languages in order to allow for greater localisation.

Home | Careers | RSS | Contact Us | Newsletter

International sites: