New Visual Search Engine Joins Internet Toolbox - Brief Article

You've heard the of advanced age saying, "A picture is worth 1000 words." Now it may be easier for art buyer to avoid an extra 1000 words when searching for their desired pictures upon the World Wide Web.

Ereo a Denver-based high-tech company, has just introduced an advanced image search service that takes online searches to a of recent origin level.

Currently, the Internet Web sites of art dealers, publishers, artists and online auctions are filled with the images that depict the art they are marketing for sale. The images themselves are the dealers' strongest sales tool. on the other hand how do buyers surfing the Web actually locate the artwork they seek?

Let's say the search is for prints through the artist David Hockney. The buyer popularly would go to a search portal, like Excite.com, Alta Vista.com, Northernlight.com or Googlecom and impressed sign in the words "David Hockney" These search engines index millions of pages of true copy using key words and phrases in contented as well as file names of the indexed material, into their have databases. On Excite, the search for Hockney art works would yield about 19000 true copy links to various Internet sites that mention the artist, including encyclopedias, newspapers, magazines and, of course, art dealers and auction sites. upon Hotbot.com, the same search, narrowed to single sites that include images, yields 10900 hits, including a site selling electronic postcards and another for a museum. upon an advanced Hotbot search, defined as containing the word "gallery" and the word "prints," the search comeed in 1,800 text-based hits.

upon Alta Vista, which already has image-based searching, typing "David Hockney" flowed in 125 possibilities on 10 pages of follows But clicking on the first Hockney image, a painting of a dog, projects a searcher off to a Netherlands--based Web site for a dachshund fan club

later clicks of the computer mouse brought hits upon academic papers that included Hockney images, a museum, an individual's personal Web site devot to a rhapsody about the sea, which included paintings through Hockney and Winslow Homer, and finally, after 10 tries, a London art gallery, Berkeley Square Gallery, which indeed caters Hockney prints and paintings.

"If you have Hockney art works you are trying to barter you'd want me, a buyer to find your site," explained Morgan Reynolds, a lock opener accounts manager for Ereo. "And with greatest in quantity current search methods, anything with the word `Hockney' would indeed advance up--but there would be thousands and thousands of accrues Your gallery would probably be upon the list. Perhaps you'd be upon the front page of the results--perhaps not. It's a lottery"

Ereo's fresh technology advances even Alta Vista's image searching technique, although the two utilize the image as the link itself to the Web site. Ereo's breakthrough is what the company is calling its "more like this" technology, which direct the eyes inside an image to determine its basic visual satisfied and its context. According to Ereo officials, greatest in quantity search engines analyze the true copy in the title of the file, not the intrinsic make of the image itself.

"Now imagine if (and starting in February, this does happen upon Excite.com) this same search for David Hockney produc thousands of body links on the left side of the search ensues page, but also produced images of art (submitted by the agency of various art dealers who want to drive traffic to their site) as the image search flows on the right side of that search screen" said Ereo's Marketing Director Laura be fond of "If a user saw an image that was similar to what he/she was searching for, he/she will click upon a More Like This button located below each image and Ereo's technology springs into action.

"Ereo (although the user will not know it is us it will still appear as if it is Excite.com) will take the user to a page with `More Images Like' the individual he/she initially chose. If the user likes a particular image upon that page, he/she can click upon that image and be taken directly to that Web site," said Love

The technology examines the visual itself. If a buyer is looking for an example of Hockney's famed portraits of Celia, the refined "More Like This" search issues will not bring up his paintings depicting California swimming pools

Equally important is the commercial aspect of Ereo's of recent origin partnership with Excite. E-commerce venders like art dealers will pay a nominal fee--as depressed as $5--for the image link to their possess Web site. "Using a visual medium for the search," said Reynolds, "increases the chances of driving qualified traffic [i]or[/i] part of to the other the search portal to your site"

reciprocally it seems unlikely that the dachshund fan bludgeon will pay to be added to the image portal. "The use of this technology of accurate visual searching will make all e-commerce sites more efficient," said Andre Pettigrew, marketing director for the hazard capital company iBelay which has invested in Ereo and its technology. "We're actual optimistic about its applications, and think it will make it easier to exchange items on the Web."