Very Cool Search Tools - FINALLY

As I had some spare time over the holiday weekend due to the snowy weather and Grandma keeping a eye on the girls I found a couple of really useful search engine sites. Most of us use Google while performing our random searches. However their results page is terrible and archaic at best. I usually am fooled into clicking on a site based on the tiny tid bit of information that is in the site description only to find that it has NOTHING to do with what I am actually looking for. The sites I am sharing here allow you to actually see the site before opening the page. And don't worry, you get the actual results from Google, Yahoo and many of the other big search engines but these sites give you a brand new way to view, navigate and administer your web, video, audio and shopping searches. I will not pretend to be an Internet search expert but as I took a few minutes to play with each of these sites I felt like I was using an iPhone.

Viewzi http://www.viewzi.com gives you 15 different ways to view your results. Just a few examples are:

• Simple Text - Like Google
• Viddler Video
• Power Grid
• Google Timeline - Kinda cool
• Photo Tag
• Amazon View

Plus many more. I have included a couple of the more useful views that were based on a search I did about Abraham Lincoln.. Go check out Viewzi and play with the different views that are in the upper right hand corner. Give me any feedback or send me something that is more useful.

Web Screen Shot View:

A view from Viewzi's Photo Tag Cloud:

Another interesting search engine that I found is www.searchme.com. Their home page is horrible but once you start your initial search things get interesting. The search content comes from the big guys and again this is a very visual way to literally VIEW your search results. You can SEE the actual page. At the bottom of the page displayed in front it shows the brief description and explanation of that page.

This is an example with what Searchme calls the Night View:

Below is the "Day Time" Version. The yellow highlighted area points to the magnifying glass. When clicked on, the magnifying glass opens a box and magnifies the web screen so you can look closer at the content or pictures. You can drag that box over any area on the screen for an expanded look at the content. If you like the what you see you can simply double click on that view and that site opens in a new browser tab.

Here is a view from the Images screen. You can see the other pictures, click on them and bring them forward into the larger view.

Both of these have issues and faults obviously because they are rather new. Viewzi is still in Beta version and Searchme is still working though some technical issues. But if you are visual like I am and want to see the home pages of your search results while being able to click and drag through the other results these sites might be useful. Both have browser plug ins and mobile versions. Searchme's Video and Music sites are very cool. Pick the result to bring to the front and the music or the video begins. Very simple and extremely intuitive.