Ok let’s forget about the fancy looks and gadgets of Windows Live Image Search Beta for a minute and let’s get straight down to what really matters, that being adequate image search results!

Ok let’s try some image search queries, first with the normal MSN Image search:

http://search.msn.com/images/results.aspx?q=medway+building

34 results found containing medway building

12 images were of the medway building
7 images were related to the building (buildings on the same campus)

This gives us 19 images out of a total of 34 that are correct or related to the search query, that’s just over half, not to bad!

Now let’s to the same search but this time with Windows Live Image Search:

http://www.live.com/#q=medway%20building&scope=images

54 results found containing medway building

4 images were of the medway building
4 images were related to the building (buildings on the same campus)

This gives us 8 images out of a total of 54 that are correct or related to the search query, something isn’t quite right here don’t you think, more results but less correctly matching results!

Ok let’s move deeper into search quires, what about capitalization, does that alter the search results, well it would seem so, see these two links:

http://www.live.com/#q=medway%20college&scope=images&page=results
http://www.live.com/#q=Medway%20college&scope=images&page=results

The first search link with no capitalization brings up various results, while the second using the same search query but with capitalization on the M and the C brings up NO results at all, ok should this be happening, is this correct?

Now when I was searching for “medway building” I was hoping to see the following images within the search results these are images that I took around September 2005 and have been online all that time:

darrenstraight.com/blog/images/2005/09/medwaybuilding2005c.jpg
darrenstraight.com/blog/images/2005/09/medwaybuilding2005c.jpg
darrenstraight.com/blog/images/2005/09/medwaybuilding2005c.jpg

Now I say I was hoping to see them because they are from a blog post I posted in September 2005 on my blog which is in direct relation to the college and contains the name of the building and campus within the title and actually post:

http://www.darrenstraight.com/blog/2005/09/12/new-medway-college-campus-at-pembroke-chatham/

And I also say this because I see Google’s Image Search has picked them up with various search engine queries like: “medway building” / “pembroke campus” / “medway campus” and many more!

So I still think they have some way to go yet on improving the actual search quires on some specific search strings, I say specific because this is just one example I’ve shown you that didn’t work as expected, you yourself may try another search query example and you may get great results!

Ok now that I’ve had my say about search engine quires with Windows Live Image Search let’s get to what we really like deep down, yes that’s right it’s the part I said lets forget about for a minute, that being the fancy looks and gadgets!

Ok so what does Windows Live Image Search Beta have to offer you that not all other image search engines don’t have, well here’s a nice little list for you:

Infinite scrolling
Thumbnail-image-sizing customisation
Filmstrip view
The ability to see the final image without leaving the results page
A richer image click-through experience

So as you can see Windows Live Image Search Beta definitely has some cool features to show of and well I guess that’s what wins my heart at the end of the day, sure they still have to improve their image search results but I believe that if everybody sends in their feedback like I have done on the feedback page and also blogs about their problems then we can change the tables for the better, because don’t forget you are the customer and Msn wants what’s best for you, that’s why they would love to hear your views on what you think about their products and services.

Anyway that’s all from me now, best of luck to everybody on the Windows Live Team! 😀