The new Yahoo! interface includes more recommended search queries for related images than Google, a next-image picking slideshow on each image's page, and an easy direct link to the image itself. Unfortunately, there is not a filter by copyright conditions, which is a major shortcoming.

Google's interface does not make it as easy to scan through multiple images as quickly, but both could use meaningful support for limiting searches to Creative Commons or public domain images. The new Yahoo! Image Search option of limiting to within or outside of Flickr isn't really useful at all.

None the less, we're impressed with this small change from the search giant and we expect that for casual image searching, Yahoo may now be the engine of choice for more people.

Now, Google is working to fix that with new filtering options.

Still, I have to admit that I'm with Tam Vo over at VentureBeat. Even with these new options, the filter that would provide the most value is still conspicuously absent. I remain hopeful that Google Image Search takes a page from Flickr's book and adds the ability to search by Creative Commons licensing.

Until filtering by license information becomes available, Image Search remains a valuable tool for finding images - and with the new filters you have a much better chance of finding what you're seeking - but they're not images you're likely able to use, legally.

For now, this search only includes CC-licensed images from Flickr, Yahoo's own photo sharing service. The Yahoo Image Search interface actually turns out to be a very nice gateway to the CC-licensed image collection on Flickr, especially because the previews update immediately after you change a filter setting.

Flickr's own search interface is relatively clunky compared to Yahoo Image Search and the filter settings on Flickr are hidden behind the advanced search feature which only appears after you have initiated a regular search. While this is also true for Yahoo Image Search, Yahoo remembers your settings between search sessions, which is quite a time-saver.

There are also a number of third-party tools for searching CC-licensed images on Flickr, including compfight, one of our favorites, but few are as slick as Yahoo's Image Search.

As we reported earlier this year, most Flickr users choose the most restrictive licenses for their images, but with over 100 million CC-licensed images on Flickr, chances are that you will find a good picture with the right license for almost any occasion.

From the labs of the makers of the image search engine TinEye comes an extraordinary product. The Multicolr Search Lab allows users to select up to 10 colors that they would like the images they are searching for to contain. To make a color more prominent in the image search results simply select that color several times from the provided color palette. As you pick and choose your colors the search results will automatically refresh with images that represent your new color selections.

So far, the Multicolr Search lab is available for Flickr and Alamy Stock Photography. However, not every Flickr image will be searched. According to the site, they extract the colors "from 3 million "interesting" Flickr images. Using our visual similarity technology you can navigate the collection by colour."

Unique Image Search Engines

In addition to the Multicolr Search Lab, I'd also recommend checking out the BYO Image Search Lab from Idée. The BYO or 'Bring Your Own' Image Search Lab allows you to upload an image or choose one that's available on the web and find images from Alamy with similarities such as color tones.

Both search engines are great and unique tools to make the best of. I didn't have any problems getting great matches to the colors and images that I provided. Another bonus is the use of the Flickr "Interesting" set to ensure the best quality photo results. These are two great services that we'll be sure to keep an eye on.

There are no major surprises here. The app gives you access to the majority of Google's standard mobile search features (search suggestions, access to your search history, local search etc.) that are also available on the iPhone and Android, with the notable exception of voice search. This is an interesting omission, especially given that Google has recently made voice recognition a focal point of its mobile apps. Microsoft's Bing-powered built-in search engine features voice search and is obviously deeply integrated into the user experience on Microsoft's own operating system.

If you have a Windows Phone 7 device already, you can download the app by searching for "Google Search" in the Marketplace. The app is available for free.

Apart from the AdWords release, Google's Image Search redesign offers speed and a higher quantity of images to the user. The new design features a tiled look with the ability to show more than 1,000 photos on a single page. As users hover over the results of their search, the image thumbnail increases and details of that result are displayed.  Below are a few photos of the new interface.

The company has rolled out the redesign to 10% of users and will continue to make it available in waves over the next month. To inquire about the image advertisement program, marketers can sign in to their regular AdWords account.

What makes these new results more user-friendly is the fact that Google now clusters related results together. The new results are marked with a red pin and feature direct links to relevant review sites like Yelp, Citysearch, Zagat, Urbanspoon and TripAdvisor. Whenever possible, Google will also select a relevant quote from one of these reviews and display it right on the search results page. Google notes that a standard Place Search results page now features between 30 and 40 relevant links. The company claims that in its tests, Place Search saved users "an average of two seconds on searches for local information."

These new pages actually look quite a bit like Bing's local search results, though Bing does not display these by default whenever it detects a local search.

One trend that ASE editor Charles Knight is beginning to see is that some of the alts are getting larger. Charles noted: "We have always said that there are 4-5 major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Ask) and 100 Top ASE. But we may have to revisit that. Some ASE (maybe - blinkx, GigaBlast, Exalead, picsearch, Answers.com, Eurekster, Quintura - this is a new concept) seem to be growing larger than a typical ASE, but are not ‚Äúmajor‚Ä? yet either."

Exalead was chosen as the Search Engine of the Month for October - it is a Web and image search engine.

Check out the entire list and accompanying analysis over on AltSearchEngines.

In response to user feedback about the changes, Google gave us a new feature this week called "verbatim search." In its blog post, the Google search team warns that verbatim mode will take away all kinds of helpful things they've built for us. But users wanted a way to search for exactly what they want, and Google has built it. Here's what it does and how to use it.

• You won't get spelling corrections.
• It won't personalize your results with Web history or social stuff.
• It won't include synonyms or related terms (like "automobile" if you search for "car").
• It won't search for words with the same stem (like "dancer" if you search "dance").
• And it won't be able to understand clarifying optional terms like "circa" in "Roosevelt speeches circa 1939."

In other words, Google's serious when they say verbatim search looks for your exact words. If you have a specific query you'd like to search for verbatim, here's how you do it:

Get to a search results page:

On the bottom of the left sidebar, click 'Show search tools:'

Then scroll way, way down and click 'Verbatim:'

Do you like this new verbatim feature? Let us know in the comments.

In a message to Search Engine Roundtable, Google said that it is shutting down these verticals because  "search quality has advanced tremendously, and based on our analysis we've found that in most cases you're better off looking for this kind of specialized information using the regular Google search box."

Google continually tweaks and improves its search algorithm. As Google's primary product, it is important for the company to stay ahead of the game when it comes to search prowess. The specialized search verticals, such as Uncle Sam, were intentioned to be part of the superior search experience in Google. Yet, as search evolves, those functions are now part of the main search box and a redundant product in Google's lineup. For example, Google improved its blog search in August 2010, which may have made the some of the specialized searches unneeded.

Google often creates or acquires products that become of part of core products. For instance, Image Swirl and Similar Images were both products of Google Labs that eventually were folded into the experience of Google Image Search.

That functionality will now be available without an extension (provided you're using versions Chrome 9, IE8 or Firefox 3.5 or higher) as Google is adding a new option to its search that will give you the ability to block domains from appearing in your future search results.

Once you've blacklisted a domain, you won't see it in search results, although if it would appear there, you'll get a message telling you that some results have been blocked.

These domains will be connected to your Google Account, so you'll have the ability to see your list of blocked sites and manage them via your Search Settings.

Google says it hopes this will improve search results, and it's bound to if you're irritated enough by certain domains to take the time to block them. Google also says that, at this time, it's not using any information about which sites people choose to block as a signal for search ranking. However Google plans to keep an eye on this data as it looks to improve search results in the future.

Compfight allows users to easily find a host of images on Flickr. Just type in a keyword or several keywords and Compfight will display numerous images on one page without the miscellaneous information. With the right keywords, the likelihood of you going past page 1 is slim to none. For images with a blue bar at the bottom of an image, hovering your mouse over the image will conveniently give you the dimensions. The only downside is that this enhancement is only available for original images found on Flickr.

click to enlarge

Advanced Settings

The best part about Compfight is it's advanced search settings. You can toggle your search phrase between tags only and the entire text. This is perfect if one setting produces weak results. Just switch to the other and see if it helps. You can also restrict search results to Creative Common licenses, even for commercial images. Want only original images? You can toggle that as an option too along with safe-search.

The Perfect Image Finder For Bloggers

Compfight is a perfect tool for bloggers to utilize to find images for their posts. With a vast array of features and great settings for both commercial and non-commercial blogs, we doubt you'll be let down with Compfight's results. In comparison to Google Image Search, you won't have to worry about running into any legal issues down the line. On the hand, Compfight beats messing around with Flickr's advanced settings. While Flickr may have more options, Compfight gives you the most popular advanced settings without the added hassle or confusion.

Hitwise's latest data also confirms that Google's market share in the search business is continuing to grow at a steady clip (9% year-over-year). Year-over-year, all of Google's larger competitors lost ground, though at least between December and January, both Yahoo and Ask.com saw a very minor increase in their market share.

Longer Search Queries

Year-over-year, using one and two-word search engine queries became slightly less popular, while the number of three-word queries remained flat. Instead, a growing number of users are now opting to use longer queries. Overall, longer search queries have increased ten percent over the last year.

This is an interesting trend, and it could be interpreted in a variety of way. This could mean that a growing number of users is finding less value in the search results they get from relatively unspecific, short queries. It could also indicate that users are becoming more sophisticated in how they structure their queries when they are looking for very specific answers.

Do you have a theory why more users are turning to longer search queries? Feel free to let us know in the comments.

A Newsweek article makes the case for an alternative search engine to usurp Google and become the dominant 3rd generation search engine. Our own Charles Knight, from R/WW Network blog AltSearchEngines, features prominently in the article:

"If Google has been able to crush its search competition, it's not because it has perfected the art and science of Web searching. Far from it. Google is what the industry calls a "second-generation" search engine. First-generation engines like AltaVista found Web pages containing words that matched the user's search words. Google's innovation was to further rank a Web page by the other pages that link to it, on the somewhat shaky assumption that if a page is much-linked-to, it must be useful. Charles Knight, an analyst who runs the AltSearchEngines Web site, notes there's a plethora of good ideas for what a third-generation engine might bring to the party, and no shortage of companies trying to prove those ideas. "Each has shown they can do some aspect of a search better than Google can," says Knight."

Can one of the up-start startups usurp Google in the next generation of search? It'd be a brave person to bet against Google, given its resources and reputation for innovation. But the Newsweek article highlights very well that search isn't 'solved' yet and the switching costs to try another search engine are low. And so in those respects, Google is indeed vulnerable to a greater search technology coming along and wooing millions of users.

If you want to cover your bases and see what the Next Big Thing in search may be, I suggest you subscribe to AltSearchEngines! ;-)

The Live Search promotion site also quotes Battelle from his book The Search: "Search is at best 5% solved--we're not even in the double digits of its potential."

That's something that Google no doubt agrees with. Google's execs are regularly quoted as saying search is far from a solved problem. Take this Marissa Mayer quote from a recent InternetWeek article:

'As successful as Google's search engine is, Mayer feels it could be better. "Search is superprimitive," she said. "It's disappointing that it's not advancing as much as we had hoped."'

I imagine 5% is about equal to "superprimitive".

Yet, apart from the slider bar on the image search (which is cool, I admit), I really don't see much evidence of innovation on Live Search. Is there anything new that Google, Yahoo or Ask don't already have? Not much, no. Things like Instant Answers are nice, but the others have similar features.

I don't mean to rag on Microsoft here, because I generally have been impressed by its Windows Live strategy. It's just that I don't see much to back up Microsoft's claims of innovation and "next generation" for Live Search -- am I missing something? There's nothing wrong with a bit of competitive bluster, but pretty soon Live Search is going to have to come up with the goods to back it up.