Last week the search giant Google released an update. This time it was a modification and improvement to their image search. Essentially, users can now perform image searches based on categories or subjects. Rival search engine Bing has offered this functionality since 2009. This led me to wonder if Google’s update surpassed Bing’s offering and generally, how the two engines differ for image search.
I started by performing a search on each engine on the word “steak”. One thing I have noticed in recent months is that the Google results incorporate the page number that they are on. This allows you to scroll down the page without having to click for the next set of results at the bottom of every page. Bing image search has had this continual scroll functionality for a while, but does not include pages. Personally, I find that the page break helps to keep the page feeling less cluttered. The Bing results are nicely arranged within their own individual boxes though, so that keeps it feeling quite neat.
Moving on to Google’s update, the options on the left-hand side of the page now include “Sort by subject” as well as the default option “Sort by relevance”. Clicking on this option changes the page to rows of subjects with a few example images on each row. Hovering over the row or subject title then provides the user with an option to click to view more of the same.
This is all quite logical, until I click on one of the subject options. I tried clicking on the “sirloin steak” subject row and my query now read as “sirloin steak” in the search box above the images. Bing does this too but the initial results remain clickable as the subjects appear as a clickable tab across the top of the results.
This is where the Bing and Google difference was highlighted. Google funnels the user into a more specific query, but then was unable to provide subjects relating to “sirloin steak”. At this point the user has to click the back button or start the search again. The Bing layout felt a lot clearer and gave example related searches at every stage. The tab above the results meant that at any point in my search I could click back to other categories as well as related searches.
Google released the subject search option with a view to allowing searches based on descriptions. Using the term “London domed church” and hoping to come across Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Google did not disappoint. There were only eight images on the subject page; however six of these were of St. Paul’s. The Bing results were numerous and more varied, yet all still relevant to the actual search query in some respect.
So which engine is better? It depends what you are looking for. It would seem that Google’s “subject search” does work best when identifying objects based on a description. When Google released this image search update, that was their intention. Yet this is only one way that people use search. If searching for the perfect image based on one query, Bing image search provides more options for choosing related images.
