Updated: October 19th, 2009

By: Garin Kilpatrick

The Search Engine has proven itself to be the most useful tool on the Internet. The ability to search well online means finding the best resources. For me the ability to see a Website as I search is a serious asset.  Google Preview is the best way I have to visually improve searching online.  At this years TechCrunch50 I saw a demo of the soon to be released Bing visual search and I was very impressed; check out this video I bet you will be too.  Leave your thoughts about the future of visually searching the web in the comments below!

1. Google Preview

Google Preview is an Add-on for the Firefox Web Browser that allows you to view a preview image while searching, allowing you to view a thumbnail image of a website before you visit it.  As you can see in the picture below this thumbnail is quite small, but it does the job and loads very fast.

For Google Preview or any of the best firefox add-ons to work you must first download the Web Browser Firefox. Once you have Firefox installed on your PC or Mac not only will you have access to Google Preview but you will also have access to thousands of other free add-ons for Firefox.

Google Preview has 6,924,000 downloads and this is significant because there are millions of people who have already built the preview image database. This means that load times for searching remain fast despite the images.

2. Search Cube

Search Cube is the most entertaining and visually impressive preview search engine. Despite being cool, Search Cube is awkward to use, takes a minute to learn, and mixes image and website results together on the same cube.

Search Cube is good for showing off your Search, but that’s about it.

3. Quintura

At first glance I was skeptical of Quintura, but after I used it my opinion changed.  Quintura is less focused on showing you what a site looks like and more focused on giving you an interactive way to find what you are searching for.

Note the word cloud to the left of the image above.  By hovering over a word in this cloud quintura re-queries the search and provides new results to the right.  This is an interesting concept that makes pagination more fluid and I would not be surprised if this technology is snapped up and polished by Google. Quintura has serious potential, but is lacking a slick and cool design.

Feedback

Do you know of any different cool or useful ways to search the web? Drop a thought about Searching The Web with Previews in the comments below!