I’ve recently been accepted into the SearchMe beta and thought I’d share some of my thoughts. For those that haven’t seen it yet, SearchMe is a visual search engine — the results are shown as screenshots of each site, built in an iTunes coverflow sort of way (see the photos at the bottom).
In terms of performance, I was pretty impressed. It’s all done via flash, so there aren’t any special plug-ins required. The results loaded rather quickly, and I was able to scroll forever.
The results themselves were pretty shaky. SearchMe makes it clear that they’re in beta and still working on the results, so we’ll have to give them that. I’ll send them my feedback on some of that, and hopefully they’ll get things firmed up. I kind of wonder why they didn’t partner with Google to drive the queries, then let their technology add the flash. Seems like it might have worked a little better.
I probably won’t ever use this as my primary search engine, but I could see it being quite useful for certain kinds of queries, such as trying to find the “best looking sites” in a particular genre.
Here are a few screens to give you flavor for it. Sign-up for the beta and give it a shot when they let you in.
Sorry for digging up this old article, but I have the same question on why not just let Google do the searching. Did you get an answer from them?
I never asked them directly. If they want to build their own engine and they think it can compete with Google, then more power to them. Someone needs to step up and give Google a challenge…
I find that reasoning correct. But from what I can see, their focus in on the visual side. Or should they transfer focus now and do the categorizing instead?
I agree that their focus is on the visual side, as that’s their hook. Take that away, and they’ve got nothing. However, what good are the fancy visuals if the results aren’t any good?
Transferring focus wouldn’t help — they need to focus on the graphical side of the site. That’s exactly why they should hand the algorithm side of it off to Google.