Journal mks113's Journal: Google thoughts
But I really don't understand how their image searches work. I'm pretty satisfied by the results of my searches, but what astounds me is the results of the searches coming to my site.
I have a small website about Kenya and my experiences there. Google has tracked it fairly well, and usually I find that people get what they are looking for in text searches.
Image searches are a different matter. I have one photo of my four year old son, asleep. People come to it based on all sort of search terms. Granted, some of them are valid based on the text around the photo, but why are some of the invalid ones repeated over and over.
How about "Tired old Men"? Huh?
"Young boys sleeping" is valid, but I'm not sure that the searchers are getting what they wanted.
"Old men dancing"
"Sleeping on the beach"
"White boys"
"I WANT TO SEE PHOTOS WITH BOYS AND THEIR AGE 13" I don't think he got what he was looking for.
"7 o'clock clock" Pardon?
"grandpa asleep"
"young boys on beach" Not far off, I suppose.
"go for a walk" while sleeping?
"children sleeping" Ah, accurate for once!
"children getting along" My kids? are you sure?
"me boys day" OK, whatever.
"boys school" Sorry, it was vacation.
"pretty boys" Um, please stay away from my kids.
"small beds for children" I don't mind you looking, but I'm afraid this page won't help much!
"very young little boys" I can't help to wonder...
"very nice hotel" Yes, it was, but what does that have to do with my son asleep?
"pictures of tired children" Ah! right on.
"boys hard" Away you pervert!
"dozing" Fine, but I don't use that word in the filename, the caption, or the text.
"climbing in school" Huh? how'd that get in there?
"children swimming" Warning: swimming while asleep is dangerous!
"warm colors"
"digestive system" OK, that takes the cake. Yes, an all-inclusive resort can be hard on the digestive system, but why did it pick out this picture?
"children dance room" Why did it pick this photo out of the page? Lots of others associated with the page that contains those words in different places.
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That is from the last couple weeks logs. It gets worse!
It seems that if something in the text points to that page, that photo is the one that gets chosen. I don't understand it, but I do keep wondering why people who have typed in those search terms go the next step and select that image to see the context.
Perhaps Google has some fine tuning to do, but I have to say thanks for the wonderful tools they've provided.
See the logs, formatted a little.
Michael 2002-11-12
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