Using an Image Search to Help Your Business Grow
By Lark Birdsong
Birdsong Information Services
Recently, one of my clients had a customer ask her if she could find a tent that was used in Australia and had a unique design. The client verbally described the tent to me and I used three sites to look for this product. It ended up being a useful search for this business and I thought it might be helpful to your company as well
Business Search Example
To perform this search I used Ask.com (http://www.ask.com/), Google (http://www.google.com/), and Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com/). At each home page I clicked on the images icon and then typed in tents as I did not want to narrow the search initially. I could have input Australia yet not knowing if it was manufactured in Australia might have eliminated manufactures of tents I would want to review.
After my initial search I looked at the words that were being used to describe tents and found several keywords that seem to fit the type of tent I was hoping to find. At this point Ask.com worked better as they narrowed this image search into more business categories that fit the keywords than the other two sites. Yahoo narrowed the categories yet they were more consumer oriented. Google did not suggest categories and using their advance search feature was not useful for this search. After an hour I found three manufactures that fit the description and sent them to my client. One of them ended up being the tent her client wanted and she was able to make a sale to them.
When you do an image search that is broad you will get all types of images. I saw camping tents, graphics of tents, and pictures of families by tents, so the narrowing capabilities of Ask.com really helped. Also, many companies have pictures of their products on the web and it is a useful way to gain information on products that your competitors are selling, ideas for new products and/or to find a product that might work within your existing product line.
General Search Example
One way to use an image search outside of business might be for a vacation you are planning. I am taking my mom down to the Royal Gorge Bridge for her birthday so I input these words into the images text box to see some pictures of the bridge before we go down. You might also try typing your name into the search box and see what comes up if anything. As usual in both types of search you have a lot of pictures that are not useful, yet with some persistence you can find images that are helpful.
Tomorrow the intense heat is supposed to spread to the eastern part of the United States so that this entire country will be one hot bed. It makes me think about the blizzards we had just six months ago and the extremes of both temperatures. My wish for you is some balance between the extremes in your life. If I can help you with any research please call.
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