Today Yahoo introduced a new feature for its image search, which lets users refine searches based on specific locations. In other words, if you search for a place, you will get a menu on the left-hand side of the screen that points you to images of different points of interest from that location.
For example, if you search for “Rome,” you will get a menu linking to images for the Colosseum, the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain, Circus Maximus, etc.
When you click on one of the menu items, you are presented with an overlay on your original search results with results from that particular topic, but this can easily be closed while your original results remain there. The rest of the menu also remains in place as you browse through the different options.
“With the new travel image refiner, we are continuing our focus on satisfying user intent through a deeper understanding the Web and presenting related objects from the real world,” the company says. “The travel image refiner taps into this ‘Web of Objects’ and lets you explore these popular points of interest, giving you more contextual information about your destination.”
Not every location you search for will have the feature available at this point, although you may be surprised to find just how many locations do. It’s just the really big cities. I tested our hometown of Lexington, which has it available, and even the smaller town of Nicholasville, just south of here, and it was available there too. The even smaller Wilmore does not show the feature, however.
Yahoo’s Image Search refiner is currently only available for location-specific searches, but the company is planning to expand it into other types of image searches.
