flickr images appearing in Yahoo search results

Whilst Google continues to keep Picasa Web Album images out of its search results, Yahoo who own flickr have just announced that they have begun to integrate selected flickr results into their search results.  Initially there are just 5 phrases that bring up the results:

• funny photos
• interesting photos
• travel photography
• nature photography
• black and white photography

(I'm not sure why the words are not a bit more interchangable - funny photography might not be all that common a search, but I would have thought that "black and white photos" was just as good a search to illustrate as "black and white photography").

Each of the 5 triggers ends up showing 4 flickr photos, with a link that takes you to an "appropriate" place on flickr.  This place differs for the different triggers, and includes both taking you to a particular pool (for Travel Photography), and simply doing a search (for "Funny").  The images themseleves are shown as a small square thumbnal, that shows the image title when you mouse over it.  The thumbnail links through to the flickr page for that photo, and the photographer is credited below, with their name linking through to their flickr profile.

Flickr say they have been holding back from doing this integration until they had an opt-out in place for those who do not want their images to appear in the search results.

Thomas Hawk has comments on the matter and there's a write up from TechCrunch.