Let’s see how quickly Google will grab these images from my blog and associate them with an image search for “Raymond Souster”.
It is a mystery to me how Google grabs images from everywhere on the web and serves them up in collections so quickly when we enter a search term or two. Imagine the computer power it must take and the storage capacity!
First, a shot that has not been posted online before. From the left: George Elliott Clarke, John Robert Colombo, Sarah Doucette and Donna Dunlop prepare to reveal the new plaque at the foot of “Souster Steps”.
Donna Dunlop at the September 6th plaque unveiling, reading poetry she has written about Raymond Souster. Donna is Ray’s publisher, literary and estate executor.
And last, an image that I discovered while cooking up this test. I should have known that Barker Fairley would have done a Raymond Souster portrait, but had not seen it until now. One online source dates it to 1957.
I like Barker Fairley’s work and I have written about it before. He painted portraits of our friends Ruth and John Robert Colombo. Let’s see if Google can connect the dots … and let’s see how fast it happens. I’ll come back and add the result, if Google succeeds (or fails).
Result, after 10 hours.
Google did manage to find the image of Donna Dunlop overnight, placing it further down the search results page than other, similar images from my blog. The unveiling photo has not yet been found and listed, nor has the Barker Fairley painting.
For comparison, I searched the same terms, “Raymond Souster”, in Microsoft’s Bing search engine. Results there were either better or worse, depending on your criteria. Bing was more specific. Its results focussed tightly on images of Ray, leaving out images loosely associated with him. So Bing had fewer, but more precise results. It did not find the Donna Dunlop picture or any other the other speakers at the plaque unveiling.