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For reverse image search, Google was massively behind competitors (especially Yandex) for a long time - though the gap has narrowed with Google Lens. For regul
by Ukv 3y ago
For reverse image search, Google was massively behind competitors (especially Yandex) for a long time - though the gap has narrowed with Google Lens.
For regular search results, I often find myself frustrated that Google seems to prefers ad-heavy sites where any actual content is copied from elsewhere then unnecessarily padded. As an ad company it's probably not in their interest to include it as a factor to rank such sites lower, even when though it legitimately degrades user experience. I've noticed a lot of "[game] wiki" searches on Google give an unmaintained and incomplete Fandom pages, whereas other search engines are better at surfacing the one actively used by the community.
A true blind comparison between results would be interesting. Not just users reacting to the change in site as with the article's example, and also ideally not a marketing campaign like Microsoft's "Bing It On" that dubiously claimed a 2:1 preference towards Bing.
- hbn 3y agoGoogle's reverse image search was actually great until several years ago when they nerfed it. I heard they were forced to at the pressure of stock photo companies who were upset that people could find unwatermarked versions of photos with it. There are currently no versions of reverse image search existing today that are as good as what Google was offering several years ago.
- Ukv 3y ago> There are currently no versions of reverse image search existing today that are as good as what Google was offering several years ago. Which have you tried? Finding unwatermarked versions of stock image photos is a pretty low bar that most should be capable of. Some are at the level of finding videos a person appears in based on a blurry photograph of their face, or determining a street/location based on a photograph of a building.
- hbn 3y agoI've tried Google, Bing, Yandex, Tineye... can't think of any others off the top of my head. I know I used to be able to upload pretty much any image to Google and get hits of other places the image was used, and now I'll upload an image I found online and get no hits. All the reverse image searches are now trying to do cute AI tricks, like detect a handbag in the photo and show where you can buy it, or the breed of dog. All I want is other places hosting that exact image.