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As the web continues to advance in technology and capability, it is often useful to look at the shortcomings of existing technologies. Search engines have for years attempted to index and classify image data, but the bottom line is that a computer cannot (at least in an effective and efficient manner) "look at" and interpret a photo, graphic, logo, or symbol in the way a human can.
Often, web designers use designated HTML code to tell a search engine spider just what an image is about. This can be an effective tool, and may help visually impaired site visitors get a fuller user experience. For example, a stunning photo of a wailea ocean front condo in Hawaii may be described with a tag that says "picture of oceanfront condo vacation rental in Wailea, Hawaii." This would provide value to a user, and in theory, this could even allow a search engine to use the image description data in its indexing algorithm; however, there is an obvious flaw. The machine is going on blind faith, trusting that the picture of dice and slot machines is actually the "community service opportunity" site that the clever webmaster placed in the image tag…no good!
Many algorithms attempt to find text that surrounds the image to determine what the image might be about, but there are many places where this fails. Consider the multitude of uses images have on a website - photos, menu items, logos, even blank images used as spacers - very quickly you can see how this method of interpreting images is extremely limited.
Social bookmarking may provide the web's best shot at indexing image data, and to describe how this works, let's go back to our Wailea beachfront condo example. Obviously, promoting Hawaii tourism can be significantly enhanced with visual examples of the natural beauty and stunning landscapes one is likely to find on a Hawaii vacation. As visitors look at page, they have the opportunity -theoretically as unbiased, third party observers - to "tag" a webpage and tell a data collection center what they perceive the site (and its associated images) are all about.
As thousands and thousands of visitors give their two cents on what a particular image or webpage is about, trends begin to appear and the data collected begins to provide mounting evidence that the photo of the Wailea Maui condo is indeed a condominium that is for rent to vacationers visiting Maui, Hawaii. A visitor may also note that this particular image looks like a Makena oceanfront condo, and the photo's description becomes just a little more descriptive - the designer of the site may not even have known that this was a possible description of their image! A much richer set of keywords can be discovered through this method, and a number of social bookmarking data collectors are already tagging sites all over the web.
As more and more people provide input via these "tags," and the data is collected and becomes more and more valuable, these social bookmarking services become more and more valuable as their results become more and more relevant. So the next time you're looking for Wailea homes to rent for your Hawaiian Beach Vacation, you might want to try out social bookmarking as a way to preview your Hawaii vacation lodging!
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