First Impression: Snap.com
Yet another company has introduced a new search engine. This time, it is Idealab who is ready to take on Google, Yahoo, MSN, IceRocket, etc...

The site, Snap.com (interestingly enough, that domain used to be owned by my current employer), aims to help users refine searches until they get what they really wanted. According to Bill Gross' post on the Snap blog, the site was built to provide three things:

1. User control
"...you get to change the order of search results, refine search results instantly, and hone in on exactly what you’re looking for. We think you’ll love it. Give it a try. It works on any search, just refine by entering filter words in the field above any column, or click on any column to sort."

2. User feedback
"We take into account what happens AFTER people click on search listings at our site AND others, to use as feedback on the relevance, and get you better results up at the top. This helps you avoid dead end searches, and saves you time. We also can figure out, based on millions of users, what people are really looking for so we can put custom formats on search pages where previous users signaled their 'intent' by their follow-on searches."

3. Transparency
"We want to reveal every action and transaction at the site, so you know what we are doing and what other users are doing. We even are revealing OUR REVENUES. Our conviction is that you get better results because transparency prevents advertisers or others from gaming the system."

While I think the idea of using other user's searches to help predict the current user's intent is an interesting concept (and it seems cool to fiddle with the tools on Snap), I'm not impressed by the interface. For example, in the "Product Finder" section (do a search for "digital camera"), clicking on a product result doesn't take you to the website for that product. Instead, it displays information about that product within the Snap page. Unfortunately, that information is displayed down in the middle of the page (instead of at the top) and it isn't apparent what is happening.

I also think that there may be too many controls. Some people are just really bad at searching for stuff. I don't think that giving them a bunch of refinable columns in their results page is necessarily the answer.

Plus, the columns require too much thinking on the user's part. There is a column for "web popularity" which can be refined with a text box. What do I put in that box? A number. Ok, but what number? What is the range of popularity that I have to choose from? Is 1 the most popular? The same problem exists for the columns labelled "web satisfaction, "popularity" and "satisfaction." And what is the difference between "web satisfaction" and "satisfaction."

Most importantly, they don't have enough results about ME (And, no I didn't mean "sporty" when I searched)!

The site just launched yesterday and it is still in Beta, so it will be interesting to see how it evolves over the next few months.