Review: Snap.com A New Web 2.0 Search Engine
Well boys and girls there is a new search engine in town. Snap.com is the latest Web 2.0 search engine that really has a nice “cool factor”. I have yet to decide if the “cool factor” will retain my attention for long, it will also depend on the quality of the search results.
When you first load up Snap you will find a 2 toned web page with nothing more than a search box and a small advertisement for a service they offer website owners and bloggers. However the real magic begins when you start to type in a search term. It suggests search terms as you type. Now that is nothing new Google has been doing that for a while now. What I did find cool was that if you typed something like Joseph Crawford it would give you the option of searching the news for the keyword.
When you submit the search you are presented with something that looks more like an application rather than a website (I know things are going this route with Web 2.0). At the top of the page you will find the search box with a link to the 3-minute demo that will show you all the site has to offer. Also at the top on the right hand side they have a pull down menu where you can alter the site settings for things such as keyword suggestions, adult filter, and probably the coolest Click on Title. The click on title setting allows you to change how the site reacts when you click on a search result’s title. You can either have it replace Snap, open in a new window or open within snap. The first 2 are pretty self-explanatory. The 3rd however allows you to view the sites right inside the Snap site. If you set this and click on a result you will see it load in the Right pane.
On the left side of the page there is a pane that will display your search results. The search results include information such as the site title, description and URL. When you look at the description you will also notice that your search keywords are marked in bold text. You can scroll down through the search results using a scroll bar or at the bottom of the left pane there is a button labeled Next Result. I am not too sure how useful that button actually is. Personally I find it annoying and opt not to use it. When you scroll down to the bottom of the list there is an option to click for more results on the search term. When you click for more results it does not take you to another page like most Search Engines. Rather it will add the next set of results to the same list. While using Flock (which is based on Firefox 1) I have found it to be a bit buggy when you click for more results.When you use the scrollbar and scroll quickly it appears as if the results vanish and then just reappear after a moment or 2 from out of nowhere. However when using Safari on OS X it seems to run much faster. Itmakes me wonder why it would work better in Safari than Firefox… Now here is another cool feature they have integrated. While scrolling the search results if you do not wish to use the scroll bar or the Next Result button, you can use you’re up and down arrow keys.
One of the coolest features of the site is when you select a search result (do not click the title link, just click the box) it will load up a screenshot preview of the website in the right hand frame. This will also give you the option of opening the site in the right pane or in a new window. You can also break away from using your mouse, if you have already chosen a search result by either scrolling or using your up and down arrow keys you can now hit enter to launch the site in a new window or hit the right arrow key to have it load inline on the Snap site. Now one thing that I have found which did not appear to be documented was the fact that if you hit the right arrow key to load the page inline on the Snap site, you could then hit the left arrow key to go back to the screenshot page. This only works if you have not clicked any links on the site. As soon as you navigate away from the homepage of the site you are viewing inline on Snap you can no longer hit the left arrow to go back to the screen shot.
Snap is really wanting to only house good search content and results so they have the ability for users to mark results as perfect or Junk. This will probably be taken advantage of by some users however I think that overall that is a good idea.
One feature that I have yet to find a use for (maybe its just me but I think it is a waste of time and bandwidth on Snap’s part) is the Snap Preview Anywhere ability that they are offering to website owners. Pretty much you signup for the service (free of charge) and enter a small bit of JavaScript on your site just before the tag. This will then turn any link that you have on your site into a quick preview. Basically the link does not change, when a user clicks the link they are taken to the page you specify. What does change is it allows for a hover action. When a visitor hovers their mouse over a Google link a screenshot of the Google homepage would be shown inline on your site.
This is neat from a website owner’s perspective but I can only see how it would slow down the service that Snap offers on their site. Also as a site owner I am not sure why I would use this. It is a nice “cool factor” but in the end it will just slow down my site’s load time.
