14 DAY TRIAL // Yahoo may be on the brink of selling its Search business or at least “renting” it to Microsoft but this hasn't stopped development, with new features still coming in. And, if you're planning a vacation this summer or you’re just stuck at home, this one is for you. Yahoo Image Search has rolled out an exploration tool that allows you to take a virtual tour of popular locations within a city.
“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 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,” the Image Search team wrote on the Yahoo Search blog.
Entering a city name in Yahoo's Image Search will not only give you the usual results but also a side bar suggesting some of the most popular sites in that city. Entering Paris for example will list several locations based on their popularity, from the Louvre Museum to the Moulin Rouge. The Eiffel Tower is, of course, one of the most photographed locations, with over 1 million images showing up in the results. Clicking on one of the suggested sites will bring up an overlay allowing you to take a virtual tour of the location without leaving the original search results.
This last feature could prove very useful, enabling users to make just one search for a variety of locations within the city, saving time and also providing a much better overview. What's more, while the image refiner is now only available for locations, Yahoo plans to introduce the feature for other types of image searches.
Travel-related searches are becoming increasingly popular, with Bing bringing one of the best travel search experiences and Google recently launching a feature somewhat similar to Yahoo's, which incorporates photos of a location in general searches.
