Two Unusual Ways to Go Graphical with Searches

Visual web search tools have been around for a while, with long-standing sites such as Kartoo providing graphical views of search results. These are sometimes useful and sometimes just gimmicks, but Viewzi and Redzee are two sites that may appeal to many web workers.

The idea behind these sites is to shake up the model for viewing search results, potentially allowing you to discover information you wouldn’t find with, say, a standard Google search.

Viewzi lets you view graphical search results from many different angles, with one view seen above. For example, I did a search on “netbooks” at Viewzi and got back screenshots of many blogs and news sites with current coverage on the topc. Atop Viewzi’s search results pages, there is a toolbar-like list of views I can switch to. I can investigate nebooks in a simple text view, which allows me to see a lot of results at once, I can look at various graphical grids of results, and I can choose a photo view that will show me pictures of many netbook models.

In my experience, Viewzi is especially good for evaluating things where pictures make a difference. The utility of the various available views primarily comes in letting you preview the actual sites where the content you want resides, and look at a lot of pictures at once. It’s worth trying to get a feel for it.

Redzee is another visual search engine that I like for its slick interface and very unGoogle-like approach to delivering results. I discussed it once before here, and it has come out of beta testing since then.

Redzee delivers search results in a similar fashion to the Cover Flow view found on iTunes. You get thumbnails of sites with content related to your search, and then you can hover and move your cursor to cycle through them. Here again, the site is especially good for doing things like evaluating technology projects and other physical things where pictures will make a difference to you.

If you’re used to using Google alone for web searches, the very different search metaphors found at these sites areĀ  worth trying. Viewzi, in particular, is getting a lot of notice for its graphical flexibility.
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