I mean it! Google is one of the best search pages out there, but it (and many others) has a flaw that makes searching efficient, but often gets in the way of effective searching. It's all text. When you get a search result, the only way to judge whether you've found what you're looking for is to analyze the resulting text before you launch each site. It's much easier under certain circumstances to analyze what's relevant by seeing the actual page. Snap.com does this. On the left is the results list with the briefest of text. On the right appears a preview of the highlighted page selected from the list. You just use your arrow keys to scroll through and once you see something promising, click 'new window' to open the page in a full browser window (or in a separate tab if your Firefox is configured that way).Sometimes you just know you've found what you're looking for when you see it.
1 comment:
Agreed! Gives credence to the phrase, "Seeing is believing" too, huh?
If you're a Firefox fan (like I am), you can download an extension for it called "Google Preview" which adds a thumbnail of the website directly to your Google or Yahoo search results.
It really helps. And it's especially useful in cases where you can't quite remember the exact URL, but you'd know it if you saw the opening page of the site.
Try it out if you use Firefox. Highly recommended!
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