Seems images search online really gets better

Last night Jonathan Bailey of Plagiarism Today tweeted quite challenging question:

Has anyone seen this FavIcon before? It is very familiar to me but I can’t remember where.

If it was something like “anyone read these words?” then Google would have helped in a second.

So my inquiring (for reasons to not pass out at 3am) mind took cutting edge Google Labs Similar Images Search for a ride.

Defining search

I kind of expected Similar Images search to start with inputting image but it is still very much like regular keyword-driven image search.

So I had tiny image without any details (not even where it was seen). I knew for sure only:

• dimensions, most of favicons default to 16×16;
• filename, favicons are generally named – well favicon.ico;
• color, luckily one of new features of Labs search is color filter.

Results

After flipping around approximately 20 pages/350 images (which was faster than it sounds) I found exactly what I was looking for which led me to discussion on some forum about favicon that belongs to Plesk software. And turns out common on hosting which uses that.

Overall

Narrowing down image search is still limited to simple attributes such as image size and color. However progress is incredible – I didn’t really expect to find what I was looking for with such slim input.

Who knows, maybe in few more years fast and precise image search will be as common as text search today.