Snap is the specific company that’s behind the SearchMash redesign.  Often associated with pop-up-style previews, Snap has taken a less intrusive approach on SearchMash, and merely fills the right-hand column of results pages with screenshots.  That’s not to say Snap and SearchMash have made a popular move, however.



Complaints about the pop-ups persist, and there are also concerns that Snap’s Flash technology will increase load times.  When I mentioned the subject of this article, a fellow WebProNews staffer even said something about “despising Snap with a passion.”

Still, Snap does have its adherents – Paul Angles mentioned “[t]he 2 million websites and blogs that use Snap.com’s Snap Shots technology” before announcing the deal with SearchMash and Google.

What we’re all waiting to see, though, is if this stays between Snap and SearchMash, or if Google.com gets a preview column, as well.

Right now, it appears that there are only four different options available – play with “Timeline and map views,” “Keyboard shortcuts,” “Left-hand search navigation,” or “Right-hand contextual search navigation.”  You have to wonder just how many more ongoing experiments Google didn’t present.

Google Experimental Search may represent an evolved version of SearchMash, an off-the-beaten-path engine that is owned by Google.  As WebProNews has documented in the past, SearchMash was (and is) often used to test new features and layouts; there is, in fact, a highly visible feedback form on most pages, asking users to rate different aspects of their search results.

Still, Google should be able to get even more detailed feedback with this newest creation.  Google Experimental Search may not allow us a completely open look at what the search engine giant is up to, but I’m a firm believer in the idea that something is better than nothing, and Google Experimental Search is sure to develop a loyal fan base.

SearchMash’s search results are very similar to those offered by the Google search engine. The difference lies in the presentation and the features. As Nathan Weinberg described it, SearchMash “includes some useful and out there’ features that might not be right for Google.com, but could make a really interesting search engine.”

“Of course,” Weinberg continued, “if any of the features turn out to be huge hits, who knows?” He makes a very good point, although some of them don’t have any hope of crossing over. One of these is the way in which the SearchMash “image results [are] shown next to regular results.” This is “never gonna happen, [because] that’s where the ads go on Google.com.”

SearchMash also displays a “menu of options by each result, letting you click to get Open in this windows’, Open in new windows’, Open cached copy’, More from this site’, More similar pages’.” Weinberg considered this “another great idea that would work well on regular Google,” noting that “the code already exists there as part of the More’ tab above the search box.”

Google has yet to officially comment on SearchMash, but the privacy policy makes its role perfectly clear. “SearchMash is a website operated by Google Inc.,” declares the very first sentence. Google may have been trying to keep that connection quiet so as not to affect any of its SearchMash experiments, but the cat is clearly out of the bag and running loose in the blogosphere.

UPDATE: Danny Sullivan got an official response from Google, and posted it in this article. Thanks, Danny, for letting me know.

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Doug is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest eBusiness news.