The 32 Days of Christmas: Understanding Temporal Intent in Image Search Queries.

Temporal terms, such as 'winter', 'Christmas', or 'January' are often used in search queries for personal images. But how do people's memories and perceptions of time match with the actual dates when their images were captured? We compared the temporal terms that 74 Flickr users used to search their own photo collections, and compared them to the date captured data in the target image. We also conducted a larger study across several billion images, comparing user-applied tags for holidays and seasons to the dates the images were captured. We demonstrate that various query terms and tags can be in conflict with the actual dates photos were taken for specific types of temporal terms up to 40% of the time. We will conclude by highlighting implications for search systems where users are querying for personal content by date.