Flickr is awesome, but the search stinks. It's impossible to peruse a large quantity of images without investing way too much time and energy. In fact, most of us power Flickr searchers either use a few of these third-party search tools, or use the site:flickr.com operator with Google or Bing image search to get around the painfully poor search experience.

Thankfully, Flickr search just got a much needed makeover and it's now as smart as it should be. The redesign has focused the search experience around processing large quantities of images with a much improved layout and quicker to find filters. The new search experience was rolled out this morning, so you should already be greeted with the much improved results. You'll notice that results now follow a typical search engine layout with thumbnails as the default, and sorting options so you can toggle between relevant, recent, and interesting, and adjust size for small, medium, detail, and slideshow search results views.

You'll also love that you can click the info icon for small and medium image results to get a glimpse of a slightly larger image, and see total image views, comments, and faves, as well clickable tags and user info. Plus, should you use the advanced search options to filter for things like Creative Commons licensed images, Flickr now clearly highlights your search criteria at the top of the page.

On the right hand side of the page, you'll now see related image options to supplement your search results. According to Flickr, the new groups, photographers, tag clusters, and places boxes are "Based upon how our members are tagging their photos and participating in the Flickrverse."

We're really impressed with the Flickr search improvements, and think that it's finally a smart image search experience that we would enjoy using. What's your take on the new Flickr search? Share your thoughts in the comments.

See Also: 7 Totally Unique Flickr Search Tools