
There Are No Pictures of iPhone 4 on Google Image Search - cloudwalking
http://www.google.com/images?q=iphone%204
======
sounddust
Google Image search is unfortunately not real-time. This is not the first time
someone has noticed. Google was accused of censoring the Abu-Ghraib images,
because several weeks after the event, the photos could not be found on Google
Images. Google replied:

 _In short, There is no censorship here. We are embarassed that our image
index is not updated as frequently as it should be. Expect a refresh in the
near future._

[http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=10747654&sid=128...](http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?cid=10747654&sid=128815&tid=153)

Then they were accused of censoring a picture of Egyptian striker Mohammad
Aboutrika's goal celebration where he revealed a T-shirt with the message
"Sympathize with Gaza". Matt Cutts had to write a blog entry debunking this
claim.

[http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/debunking-a-misconception-
plus...](http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/debunking-a-misconception-plus-a-
reminder-of-how-search-engines-work/)

~~~
dieterrams
I'm happy to accept this as the correct explanation, and I'm in no hurry to
assign petty motives to Google over this, but in your last link, Matt Cutts
says "it can take a few days between when an image appears and when its
crawled by the Googlebot." And by "a few days," he appears to literally mean
less than a week.

But it's been almost a full month since the WWDC keynote, and nearly two weeks
since customers have been posting a barrage of iPhone 4 pictures to the web.
So I'm doubtful that Google Images' delayed refresh rate is a sufficient
explanation.

Edit: In response to your reply below, you might be right. I've only tried a
few searches, but images of major events from the past month seem hard to come
by. A search for 'Galaxy S' does give some results from within the past month
(the first result was from June 23), as does a search for 'Kindle graphite'
(July 2), but presumably refreshes aren't comprehensive. Still, a month-long
refresh rate is really surprising. If you need to find images from a recent
event, Google Image search may be practically useless.

~~~
Terretta
There are tons of iPhone 4 pictures, such as the gizmodo picture re-leaked
onto thenextweb, etc.:

[http://www.google.com/images?q=iphone+4&hl=en&safe=o...](http://www.google.com/images?q=iphone+4&hl=en&safe=off&prmdo=1&tbs=isch:1&sa=N&start=160&ndsp=20)

The more popular results reflect a linking pattern that's from then (mostly
linking to the curved Macbook Air style fake iPhone 4), rather than now
(linking to the released phone).

~~~
dieterrams
Ah right, sounddust's comment framed me into thinking there were _no_ pictures
of the iPhone 4 (searchable with the terms 'iPhone 4'), despite previous
commenters pointing out they appear after several pages of results. Sorry
about that.

But it does mean sounddust's explanation is incorrect, since this isn't a
matter of _whether_ 'iPhone 4'-searchable post-WWDC images are indexed. The
question is why the images are buried beneath several pages of results.

------
natmaster
I know this may sound crazy, but ever thought of using Bing? Web experience is
pretty good too: <http://www.bing.com/search?q=iphone+4>

~~~
jonknee
Why? Their image search isn't any better:

[http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=iphone+4&FORM=BIFD](http://www.bing.com/images/search?q=iphone+4&FORM=BIFD)

~~~
dalore
Actually it is. I found an iphone 4 image:

<http://images.fastcompany.com/upload/iphone4-giz.jpg>

Compared to the google search which got none.

------
KirinDave
Normally i nod knowingly and say, "No one appreciates how hard image search
really is." But in this case, both Bing and Yahoo do much better. Usually Bing
image search is better than google image search, but not by this much.

iPad images are similarly scarce. I wonder what's up? Could google really be
this ham-fisted? I find it hard to believe, given that textual searches are
not similarly obscured.

------
lunchbox
There are some:
[http://www.google.com/images?q=%2B%22iphone+4%22&hl=en&#...</a><p>Perhaps the
"4" confuses Google.

------
cloudwalking
This seems very strange to me. There are no Apple PR pictures or pictures
taken by normal folks. On the second page of results there's a picture of a
picture of the phone (at the keynote), but it's not until page six that
there's actually a picture of the thing. And it's the stolen Gizmodo one at
that.

Am I the only one that finds this really weird?

(Here's a screenshot, as I imagine this will change at some point:
[http://cloudwalking.posterous.com/where-are-all-the-
iphone-4...](http://cloudwalking.posterous.com/where-are-all-the-
iphone-4-pictures))

~~~
itistoday
Maybe in retaliation at Apple, Google applied their porn-filtering AI prowess
to remove iPhone 4 off the face of Google Image Search?

</conspiracy>

(They start to appear after page 5 btw).

~~~
c1sc0
Or when you search for 'iphone4'

------
m_eiman
Maybe an effect of SEO madness and the enormous hype surrounding everything
iPhone?

------
burriko
Google's image search is a very different beast to their text search. It isn't
continually updated in the same way, instead they seem to do an update every
month or so. It's 1 month since wwdc when images of iphone 4 appeared, so it's
possible that they just haven't done an update in that time.

------
sh1mmer
IIRC image search updated way less frequently than search itself. If that is
still true it may explain why there are "prototype" and "concept" images but
not release images.

------
hko
Odd. There are on Yahoo image search:

[http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A9G_bDiWzT...](http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A9G_bDiWzTJM8mQAxsqJzbkF?p=%22iphone+4%22)

------
poundy
Pretty interesting.. but there are a few results for "iphone four".
[http://www.google.co.uk/images?&q=iphone+four](http://www.google.co.uk/images?&q=iphone+four).
In the UK version the first image result is the iphone 4.

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jamn
At least it seems to me that Droid X has similar problems:

[http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=droid%20x&gbv=2...](http://www.google.com/images?hl=en&q=droid%20x&gbv=2&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi)

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vegasbrianc
Put the word Apple in front iPhone 4 and iPad. This will help your search.

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navitronic
There are no iPad images either.

~~~
bombs
They start at the end of the first page.

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pizzaman
ipad images are "blocked" (or at least they were when it was released) and it
seems like they're doing the same with the iphone. Well, apple won't allow
google ads in their apps anymore...

