SearchCrystal Searches Visually
By Samuel Guzman | August 20th, 2007 at 06:26 am ET
When a successful web product has been around for some time, inevitably there are people who think that they can improve on it with a new product. One example of this is SearchCrystal. SearchCrystal is a startup that believes it can improve searches by doing them visually. When you search for an item, it displays the results from all the popular search engines in a sort-of map.
The way search works on SearchCrystal is that it comes back with bunch of text results and polygons mashed up in the result window for your keyword. Shape of the polygons indicates how many search engines found it, and size of the images indicates the rank. And to make it more intutive color of small round indicates the search engine. However, I found this display, a mass of rings, colors, and shapes, to be more confusing than helpful.
Supposedly, the better the results, the more they will stand out in this display. However, I didn’t get this impression with SearchCrystal. If a search engine needs a user guide, it isn’t designed properly. I simply don’t see the point of re-inventing the wheel in this area. I believe a good search engine is one that displays the results in a clear, fast, and accessible manner, and SearchCrystal doesn’t do that. If you really must have a more exciting way to search, then perhaps SearchCrystal is for you. Otherwise, stick to what works.
SearchCrystal allows users to search blogs, tags, images, video, news, and wikipedia. Similar products are Quintura, SearchMapr, SpaceTime, and Ditto.
on August 20th, 2007 at 9:00 am
Samuel, thank you for discussing searchCrystal.
It aims to complement Google and make it possible to visually compare search results, because such a comparison can be very informative and produce valuable insights.
You show the results for “startupsquad” and the searchCrystal’s bullseye shows that “startupsquad.com” is displayed in the very center: all five engines return it as the #1 result … may be you knew this already, but it is good to know from a SEO point of view.
If I do a search “Sam Guzman” then searchCrystal guides me immediately to a mashable profile … yours?
The fact that multiple engines rank it highly, tells me that it could be a good result.
BTW, if you prefer to see the results as a list, then please click the icon in the top right of the crystal.
searchCrystal shows you the quality of the results and guides you toward relevant results:
a) the more engines that find a result and the more highly they rank it, the better the result;
b) the greater the agreement between the search engines, the better the quality of results.
The full version offers you a powerful research tool that lets you compare up to 500 results, add comments and share and compare saved crystals with your friends (and more).
Hope you give it another try and if you have feedback on how to improve it, please let me know