Check the first result for [Harry Potter] on Google Image Search (moderate safesearch on):
http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&gbv=2&q=harry+potter&btnG=Search+Images

http://img168.imageshack.us/img168/6638/harrynu6.png

(And in case anyone doesn't know why these images are there, the actor who played Harry Potter – Daniel Radcliffe – is currently starring in a play in the UK where he does a scene in the nude...)

Side-note... this dude was invented before Harry Potter:
http://www.coverbrowser.com/covers/books-of-magic

That's true, but the top results are very bad and not related to "Harry Potter", the character.

Yahoo, Ask and MSN do much better:
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A0oGkkbSGTVG8FoAIwVXNyoA?p=harry%20potter&ei=UTF-8&fr=moz2&fr2=tab-web
http://images.ask.com/pictures?qsrc=1&o=0&l=dir&q=harry%20potter
http://search.live.com/images/results.aspx?q=harry%20potter&FORM=BIRE

That's a tough one for Google. Those images are very popular in the Internet (what can I say – he was popular before and grew up to be pretty hot man), the source certainly isn't erotic/porn site, but in fact pretty well established newspaper. And the picture itself isn't very bad – just a shirtless man. This picture shouldn't be there just because the term is often used by younger users (also know as kids ;]). But there is almost now way for Google's algorithm to understand all such complicated factors.

I think what Ionut is getting at that Daniel Radcliffe!= Harry Potter, but in public perception, I suppose the two are almost equivalent, and I guess Google reflects this...

And the article from smh mentions "Harry Potter" 6-7 times, including the heading... But still, other search engines have much better results.

Just to note, you will only see that topless harry potter pick when you have SafeSearch turned off. You get totally different results with Moderate and Strict SafeSearch turned on.

Moderate SafeSearch first result:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/173/477621891_2624787b6d.jpg?v=0

Strict SafeSearch first result:
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/183/477621895_e0854ae8c2.jpg?v=0

Google's Image Algorithm labels the image as Harry Potter because under the picture on that site, it says "Photos: Harry Potter star bares all". Plus there are 7 references to Harry Potter in the article where that picture is displayed. So its the originating website that caused Google Image search to label that picture as Harry Potter.

Not true, Colin. I have moderate safesearch, which is the default (there's a screenshot above).

> But still, other search engines
> have much better results.

What interesting Live.com have BOTH the best kids-friendly result for "Harry Potter" AND the best results for people looking for photos like the firs result in Google, when searching for "Harry Potter naked".

Maybe it's time to start using some other Image Search Engine than Google. But I really don't like using Microsoft products. And I totally boycott Yahoo.com.

(NSFW?)

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If stuff like this is considered "unsafe" for kids ...
http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2007/01/31/harry2_narrowweb__300x425,0.jpg

... then in Germany, kids couldn't walk the streets (billboard ads), enter a magazine shop (magazines), go swimming (people), enter a book store (fantasy novel covers), or watch TV (anytime)...

I don't know how kids-friendly are those results, but they're definitely not relevant for my query. It's like searching for "Yahoo" and finding a picture of Pamela Anderson. Oh, wait...
http://images.google.com/images?as_q=yahoo&um=1&hl=en&output=images&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&svnum=10&btnG=Google+Search&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&imgsz=&as_filetype=&imgc=&as_sitesearch=&safe=images

> but they're definitely not
> relevant for my query

I can't agree with you. People think about photos of Daniel as photos of Harry Potter. That's the fact. And the best evidence of that is that they label this photos as such. And that's *precisely* why Google treats them the same way.

In general I think it's Yahoo Images which returns non-safe images for all kinds of unrelated queries. I just tried these four queries on Yahoo Imahges, SafeSearch on...

hello
you
world
life

... and there wasn't a single result page which didn't show scantily clad people, or people in bed, etc. (These particular results were actually quite harmless, but if you ever tried to e.g. base a family-friendly image game on Yahoo image results, it will be nearly impossible, because there's so much adult stuff in Yahoo's SafeSearch image results.) Yahoo does include some manual blocks, for instance when you search for "cock", there won't be a single result at all, and just a warning message. Google is much smarter about this: search for "cock" with SafeSearch enabled, and you get lots of pictures of cock-the-animal.

the third result is from a satanic webpage :
http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.exposingsatanism.org/images/witchcraft/head-in-sand-harry-potter.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.exposingsatanism.org/harrypotter.htm&h=500&w=390&sz=15&hl=en&start=3&sig2=OX2DCgHpnpmwlnd-hC1VRw&tbnid=eUKcB1wqpsAcrM:&tbnh=130&tbnw=101&ei=xLk1RvKJNpaG0QTEibSuDw&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dharry%2Bpotter%26gbv%3D2%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG
Does that count as safe ?!

(and for all of you who don't know, i DON'T believe in Satan nor worship Satan)

It's not satanic, on the contrary. It wants to reveal why kids shouldn't read the book. "This page is for those who seek truth about the book series Harry Potter. Many think it is just harmless fantasy. True it is fantasy, but it is laced with witchcraft and demonology as are most books like it. "

And that considered as safe for kids?
If you ask me, i don't think so..

> And that considered as safe for kids?

I don't consider extreme Christian content as safe for kids ;) and I'd rather my children (which I don't have) to see shirtless Harry Potter than extreme Christian propaganda, but I haven't heard about a filter that filters out those kinds of content ;] "Safe-search" is about adult content, not content that we don't agree with ;]

lollll...
bottom line here...
Google should work more on it's " Safe " Search?

Alternative bottom line...
"Safe" search is subjective.

<<Google should work more on it's " Safe " Search?>>
Look at yahoo image search for hotmail- with safesearch ON!

http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=hotmail&fr=yfp-t-501&toggle=1&cop=mss&ei=UTF-8

Bottom line: Google image search is poor (and sometimes even poorer than the competition).

> Bottom line: Google image search is poor

I disagree with this analysis, at least if you base it on the Radcliffe/ Potter connection. A good search engine should reflect connections people online draw, whether or not those connections are precisely logical or not. As another example (and not an analogy to the Radcliffe/ Potter thing), while it's strictly speaking incorrect for Google to return this blog when you search for [google blogoscope] (without the "d"), it still makes sense because that's a popular misspelling. In fact, I think based on the Radcliffe/ Potter example, Google is ahead of the competition by showing a greater diversity (and potentially up-to-dateness) in their results.

But I have another gripe: Google Image search updates way too slowly... took them half a year to get the first few hundred images from CoverBrowser.com indexed! (I'm not saying it's slower than competitor's, necessarily...)

And why an image of Pamela Anderson is the top result for "Yahoo"?

I wanted to check the site in the result, www.ghettodriveby.com/yahoo/ , but it doesn't load here...

Text cache:
http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:FL7MutxTV5cJ:www.ghettodriveby.com/yahoo/+http://www.ghettodriveby.com/yahoo/&hl=en&client=firefox-a&strip=1

Full cache:
http://209.85.135.104/search?q=cache:FL7MutxTV5cJ:www.ghettodriveby.com/yahoo/+http://www.ghettodriveby.com/yahoo/&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=HGD&strip=0

Spam?

I wonder what this page was all about. They point to "a.wholelottanothing.org/junkdrawer/yahoo.jpg" and the link text apparently was "Random video for yahoo". I wonder if the original image was automatically scraped from another image search engine to be displayed in an auto-generated article for ghettodriveby?

On a side-note, the top image result from Yahoo for "Yahoo" – if you disable SafeSearch – is two people making out, nudity showing...