SearchMe Handy for Competitive Analysis

Bored of the plain, text-heavy search listings on Google and other major search engines? Searchme might just be the solution. Sure the private beta launched in March, but it's only Beta and a lot of folks won't have seen it yet, so I thought I'd give it a nudge in the blog.

What's the point? Making search more visual and intuitive. With some help from the minds at Adobe they put together a really slick interface that's almost kinda fun to interact with.

For some kinds of searches I could see it being a pain in the butt, while in other cases I've already found really convenient uses for it... competitive analysis for example. Working in a web development company, we're constantly researching competitors' websites for any given industry. What better way to browse them than by using Searchme? You can skim through and view large thumbnails of all the search results before you bother to click on them. Meaning you can buzz right pass the ugly and clearly outdated sites, and just hone in on the ones that appear worthwhile upon first glance. It's like an easy way of browsing a gigantic, universal web design portfolio. Pretty handy if you ask me.

It'll be interesting to see where this one goes. There's a big investment in it, and it's kind of a nice change.