Is water polo related to digital music? Flickr thinks so. It also can’t tell the difference between a house and a person. Can anyone make sense of this and/or provide insight into Flickr’s search algorithm? I’m using the Recent tab, because I’m often most interested in more recent photos, and the Relevant tab seems like a popularity contest plagued by watermarks. The Recent search results should still be relevant. I’m a huge Flickr fan, but this isn’t the first time the search has me asking what the Flickr?
01 Is water polo related to digital music? Flickr thinks so. At first I thought maybe the uploader tagged them “digital music”, but they didn’t. Is it me, or is the search algorithm watered-down? (VirtualMusictv/Flickr)
02 My guess here is that there picture were taken with an iPhone. But when someone is doing a recent image search for “iPhone”, what do you think they really want to see? It’s probably a recent photo of an iPhone, right? And if someone actually does want to see photos taken with an iPhone, they could use the the Camera Finder search—an awesome, but overlooked feature. (VirtualMusictv/Flickr)
03 Then I thought, let me try something easy—something that Flickr surely could handle—and searched “house.” Only one out of the first 24 image results was a picture of a house. This is when I snapped. ;) (VirtualMusictv/Flickr)
Flickr, help me help you. Considering the volume photos uploaded to Flickr, the recent search should be nearly realtime, right? But it’s only useful if the results are relevant/related. How can the search situation be made less out of focus? Tags play a major role in the search results—a user can tag their own photos and they can also tag their contacts’ photos. But how does Flickr address the issue of someone overtagging photos with popular keywords? Is it an issue? Flickr Groups, Favorites, and total views also add to the search mix—but how? Do backlinks and embeds get factored in? Ideas?
