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Social Media - Search Engines - Browsers => Search Engines on the WorldWideWeb => Topic started by: javajolt on May 11, 2014, 06:33:58 PM

Title: Why Bing Image Search is better than the competition
Post by: javajolt on May 11, 2014, 06:33:58 PM
The majority of the people may prefer Google Search over any other alternative search engine, but when it comes to searching for quality images, Bing Image Search excels. Recently, Bing published a blog, explaining why the Microsoft’s search engine is able to produce better image search results. Here is a detailed study of why Bing image search is better than the competition, along with some example.

Bing Image Search excels

It won’t be a right statement if we say that Google doesn’t give expected results at all. In fact, Google made quite a lot progress in recent years and Google’s image search results are pretty good too. However, here you will see what new features Bing has to offer when it comes to Bing image search and which make Bing a better image search engine than Google.

1. Quality of images has been improved in Bing image search

Bing says they are able to produce better quality images than ever before.  Now Bing returns mostly the High resolution images for any search, as compared to Google.

(http://i58.tinypic.com/34y78ew.jpg)

2. Better understanding of the object being searched

Earlier, search engines used to refer to the text that was used to describe a particular image. This text was being used as the information to search for a relevant image. Or, the webpage that contained this image was used as a reference. However, now Bing is able to isolate the image from the rest of its elements such as text that surrounds it and the webpage that hosts that image; and can derive the image’s position and size. This way, images that are not up to the mark are omitted from the search results. In an official blog, Bing shows an example of such images.

(http://i61.tinypic.com/9h11qd.jpg)

As you can see in the above example, the images on the right hand side are filtered out from the search results. For such filtration, certain criteria are used such as whether the object is in the background or in the foreground.

3. Displaying Hero Images in Bing image search

This is yet another feature that makes it better than Google. Bing is able to display Hero images. A Hero image is a large banner image that is prominently placed on a webpage. Bing uses this Hero image experience while displaying the image results. However, instead of placing the Hero images at the center, these are placed on the left hand top corner in the Bing image search. This is because, majority of the people across the globe scan the images from left to right. This way, users get high resolution Hero images placed at the beginning.

(http://i60.tinypic.com/dmtqo2.jpg)

4. Colour-wise search results

Even Google has the feature of displaying images by filtering them on the basis of colour. However, Bing has better understanding of the colour, because it detects whether the colour is used in the background or used for a particular object.

(http://i60.tinypic.com/t9frcj.jpg)

5. More filtering options for people

Bing certainly has one thing that Google does not have. This is the extra filtration that can be applied while searching for people; especially celebrities.

(http://i58.tinypic.com/2crtsvt.jpg)

There is a tab called as ‘People’ where users can select the options such as ‘Just Faces’ or ‘Head & Shoulders’. As the names suggests, users can filter the Bing image search results for only faces or the images with head and shoulder of the person.

6. Various filters

Bing brings more number of image filter options for the users than Google.  Following are the filters that a user can apply to view proper set of images:

  1. Size: Small, Medium, Large, Wallpaper

  2. Colors: Color Only, Black & White

  3. Type: Photograph, clipart, Line drawing

  4. Layout: Square, Wide, Tall

  5. People: Just Faces, Head & Shoulders

(http://i59.tinypic.com/25qr52o.jpg)

With so many filters and options to choose in Bing image search results, it certainly becomes a better search engine than Google in terms of image searches.

twc