Three months has passed since our launch of open beta

Three months has passed since our launch of open beta. We received bunch of feedback and suggestion and not a few feedback were sent anonymously. I can't return my message to these anonymous ones directly, so I hereby express my thank sincerely.

First 100days are called as the presidential honeymoon and people avoid criticizing the president severely. So we may receive severe feedback from now on, but we always welcome your honest comment.

The biggest update during three months is image search on Twitter that were released last week. Images uploaded on Twitter may not have enough tags, so our similar search is a convenient tool for users. Twitter is a Real Time communication tool and its usage are changing rapidly, so we need to investigate further how we should provide these image search.

We're in the final development stage of our new web application. It's not only an image search but also .... I think we can release new service in private beta around the middle of February. We will not have a special event that Apple has today, but I hope you stay tuned.

New Features to search for Images of Twitter, Funny and Sports

We just released new features that enables users to search for images of Twitter, Funny and Sports in GazoPa.com.

Images on Twitter
Twitter is getting popular as sharing images well as sharing comments. Since images on Twitter may not have enough tags, it's not easy to search for them afterwards. Now GazoPa allows users to search for similar images on Twitter. Click 'Twitter' link on the top line and latest images on Twitter are displayed in time line. Or click Twitter tab when you set any image as a search key. Images on Twitter that are similar to the search key are searched. Images uploaded by Twitpic, TweetPhoto, Fotolife and direct image URL can be searchable now and we will add images that are uploaded by other tools in future. (Update : Jan18. Due to limitation of Twitter API, we don't cover all images uploaded by Twitpic unfortunately.)

Funny Images
We realize that some users use GazoPa to search for funny images. So, we made new 'Funny' link and tab that allows these users to find Funny images more easily. An image has a power to make you laugh and relax. This new feature helps users to encounter funny images and make their life more enjoyable.

Sports Images
Sports images were displayed together with News images before and we received feedback that asked us to show sports images separately. We made new 'Sports' link and tab accordingly and this enables sports fan to reach desired images more easily. Sports images consists from valuable scenes and this feature helps users enjoy exciting moment.

Please give us your feedback to these new features contact (at) gazopa.com.

Do you like advertisement on image search?

I was asked recently whether GazoPa includes advertisement. We have not included advertisement in any forms such as text or display ads. But an advertisement is one of major monetizing method, so we'll consider to include advertisements.

Google did trials to include advertisement in their image search and 'trials showed that text ads drove people away from conducting image searches, and Google dropped that idea' in 2006. But as far as I know, Google started including text advertisement into image search last year. It means they think users' behaviors have changed and they accept advertisement on image search. Advertisements are located on upper side of search results and I have never seen it is posted at the right side of search results as in web search.

Yahoo image also includes advertisement as well, but advertisement are located at the right side of search results. Bing has not included advertisement at their image search.

Google experimented display ads in 2008. But I have never seen them and Google might have not come to final decision yet. Although there are no major search engines who include display ads, display ads should be next trend, because this type of ads can attract more users than text ads. We can see display ads at Cooliris and these ads are inserted into images very naturally (Actually, these are video ads.). Questions are how relevant display ads can be. Our similar search technology can solve this relevancy issue, so I think we can show display ads naturally at GazoPa.com.

A Tip of Bookmarklet

We received a feedback that asked us to provide a bookmarklet recently. Actually, we have been providing a bookmarklet since our private beta. I wonder why such feedback came to us and I found it's not easy for users to find a page for installing bookmarklet.

Our bookmarklet can be installed here and it's on the same page of plug-in. I think users may only know plug-in is downloadable there, but may not imagine that bookmarklet can be installed as well from the same page.

Bookmarklet is also very useful, especially when browsing pages with full of images. Just click bookmarklet and frames of images on the pages become blue. When you hover mouse on the images, 'similar search' button comes out.

In case of plug-in, right-click is required on each image. When there are lots of images on the same page and you want to use each image as a search query, it's a little bit troublesome to right-click on each image.

But if you use bookmarklet, just hover mouse on the images and a search button comes out. It's much more convenient.

For installing bookmarklet, click here or click 'Tool' on the top page and click 'Plug-in'.

The reason to search for images

Why do you search for images? Image search is always quoted as the second largest search area next to web search. How big is the market? According to Quancast, unique visitors to images.google.com in the USA is 32 million, while unique visitors to google.com in the USA is 142 million. Since YouTube does not use Google subdomain, her data is not included in the list. YouTube has 85 million unique visitors in the USA, so Google images are the fourth largest Google product after google search, maps and YouTube.

32 million is a huge number and what do these users search at image search? I don't have a figure of Google, but according to Laurie Sullivan's blog, Todd Schwartz, group product manager of online services division for Bing at Microsoft mentioned that '40% of the overall image queries are related to commercial searches, such as travel and shopping, Microsoft found that another 44% of the searches for images related to science and nature and fashion, as well as tattoos. The remainder of searches related to entertainment, from movies and television to video games and celebrities.'

Image search Queries to the Bing

40% commercial searches, such as travel and shopping
44% science and nature and fashion, as well as tattoos
16% entertainment, from movies and television to video games and celebrities

It's interesting that not a few queries are related to science and nature. Is it because it's easy to understand science visually? It's also an eye-opening fact that people search for tattoos, although it may be easy to search for tattoo by image itself rather than by keyword.

Above data is that of image search by keyword. The number of Search by upload image is largest search queries at GazoPa. I'm not sure that the trend at GazoPa is same or similar to the keyword search. I'd like to share the figure of GazoPa in future.