Image Search Engine Reviews: Scour.Net, GIF Wizard and Image Surfer


© Paula Dragutsky
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Search engines and directories specializing in images make it easy to find a Web-based picture, photograph or other graphic about practically any subject. The best image finders I've come across are Scour.Net, GIF Wizard and Image Surfer (which is in large part a directory). All of them include thumbnail images with every result they return.

But first . . . a few words about plagiarism. It's very easy to download a copyrighted graphic that you find on a web page, save it to your disk, and use it on your web site or elsewhere.

Unfortunately, this may be illegal and, besides - in the immortal words of Richard Nixon - "it would not be right."

If you want to use an image on your web site, why not ask permission? Chances are you'll get it - if you offer to credit your source.

SCOUR.NET - A POWERFUL NEW MULTIMEDIA SEARCH ENGINE

Scour.Net, (http://www.scour.net) which debuted on August 18, 1998, describes itself as the first multimedia search engine on the Web. In addition to images, it indexes audio and video on the Internet. For the purposes of this article, I'll concentrate on its image-searching capabilities which are considerable.

No other search engine can rival the amount of information Scour.Net provides for each result. However, it doesn't index as many graphics as some of the older engines, although it claims to include over 1,000,000 images.

Scour.Net's lack of indexing depth is especially evident when searching for detailed subjects. For example, you'll find images of pianos, but not Spinet pianos.

Exceptionally Informative Results

Each result in Scour.Net contains a thumbnail image, the URL of the image file, the type of image (e.g. GIF, JPEG), number of search words matched, keywords used in indexing, URL of the web source, size of the image, date it was last found by Scour.Net, and the reliability percentage of successful downloading.

Scour.Net gives you the option of searching for similar images or getting help specific to the particular result. For example, if the file you retrieved is JPEG, you'll get advice on downloading JPEG files, and how to "play" (view) and edit them.

Selecting an image resulting from a keyword search takes you to full-size graphic on a blank page. An image retrieved from a "find similar" search connects to the web page in which the graphic appears.

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