According to C|Net Ask Jeeves improves image search by adding;
New sophisticated image recognition technologies measure attributes such as image type, shape, brightness and contrast level to determine picture quality.
It is hard to tell from the naked eye, so lets do a search on Danny Sullivan. At Google the first result has nothing to do with the Danny Sullivan I was thinking about. But at Ask Jeeves, bingo, the first result is the Danny Sullivan I was thinking about. Of course that is just one search and maybe Ask just got lucky. :)
Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Comments:
Loren Baker
01/24/2006 02:44 pm
Yeah, I'm surprised they got his Nightline pic indexed so quickly http://65.214.37.88/ts?t=11294062179688693615
Chris B
01/24/2006 05:12 pm
HAHA I tried the Google image search for you and found a hybrid of you and ben I swear: http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://maps.fsl.noaa.gov/barry3.jpg&imgrefurl=http://maps.fsl.noaa.gov/barry.html&h=288&w=189&sz=18&tbnid=ei1380_SgqLDrM:&tbnh=110&tbnw=72&hl=en&start=8&prev=/images%3Fq%3DBARRY%2BSCHWARTZ%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D
Chris B
01/24/2006 05:14 pm
hee hee one more thing do you think our Danny will ever have a collection at ebay like this? http://search.ebay.com/danny-sullivan_W0QQfkrZ1QQfnuZ1QQfromZR8
Barry Schwartz
01/24/2006 05:35 pm
That picture is funny Chris.