Snap is a very unusual search engine which takes advantage of the fact more and more web users have fast internet connections and can cope with graphics-intensive sites. Recognising this, and believing that many users are becoming frustrated by the 'text in, text out, long list' method of searching, Snap created something new.

Snap's search results give you dynamic preview images of every listed site (as you scroll down using the arrow keys), and the images are large enough so that you can theoretically judge whether it is likely to be worth visiting. In addition, pressing the right arrow key for the currently selected result opens the site in the frame - this is a neat idea, but is useful only if you have a wide or double monitor setup.

So, is the addition of a visual preview really an enhancement to web searching? We check whether this feature has any real value below.

1. Commercial product - digital cameras

As you type your search in their box, related search phrases are listed below, which is clever.

You are then meant to scroll down the results using the arrow keys, but if there is nothing of interest in view you then have to use the middle scroll bar to get the lower results to come into view. Though annoying at first, this double action navigation soon becomes normal.

A bigger issue is that fact that most previewed sites do not have text that is quite big enough in the preview panel to be readable, so a user is judging the value of the site by its images, colors and layout, which is often insufficient. Of course, in other engines you would only have the title, page snippet and URL to judge the link, and Snap does give this anyway, so the criticism is probably unfair. The page titles themselves are clipped far too short though.

The search results themselves for this search term were very good, with a fine range of resources presented.

2. Commercial product actual model - a product brand + model name

We used the term Canon Powershot G7. Sponsored results are mixed among the pure listings, but are clearly identified. The results again were good, and the previews come into their own, since users seeking information or reviews would find it easy to see what the target page content is likely to hold.

3. Commercial purchase - buy CDs

The first problematical results appeared for this search - sites related to one particular band, sites about guitar tabs or wholesale CDs, and irrelevant news articles all appeared in the top 20 listings. In addition, more and more of the previews were not available but noted as 'Coming Soon' - indicating that the images are not created dynamically but stored in a spidered database created from user searches.

4. Entertainment - Naomi Campbell

Another issue which is not immediately obvious is thrown up by the first site on the results list - if a target site uses flash, the preview pane is empty, or in this case, a black box. As there is no explanation about this, a naive user might think the page is very poor or not available.

The results themselves were good, with recent news items, not ancient ones, near the top of the list.

5. Entertainment - games cheats

The preview panel started to become useful here, as we could judge immediately by the look of a site whether it was likely to be a decent resource or just an advertising vehicle.

6. Precise requirement - Berkeley sociology

The expected university department was at the top of the results listings.

7. Precise requirement - Dublin Ireland hotel

The results here were accurate and useful.

8. Precise / Travel - New York London airfare

Several spam and made-for-Adsense sites appeared in the listings, but there were good sites also.

9. Research - asthma information

The results were accurate and useful.

10. Research - Iraq maps

Their search is intelligent enough realise what we wanted was an 'Iraq map', and several sites appeared which from the previews we could see were going to provide adequate maps.

11. Searching - Dogpile.com

The expected site appeared at the top of the list.

12. Searching - Ask Jeeves

Strangely, the first site on the list was Wikipedia's page about Ask.com, with Ask.com itself only at number 2. This sort of thing did not happen for any other domain search we tried, so it seems to be a minor glitch.

Summary:

While we had our doubts about Snap's gimmicky search engine before we tested it, there is no doubt it actually provides a good way of searching the web, due to its accurate and fast results, and its useful previews. For certain types of visual or entertainment searches, it could well be actually the very best engine to use. Commercial product searches too were enhanced by the preview panel.

For young adults learning about the web, this would be a good search engine to teach them with, as the search results are much more interesting to look at than the long text lists all the other search engines produce.

Go to http://www.snap.com/

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The Snap.com search engine - analysis and comments at dunbeacon.net