Mark Evans

SearchMe: Search with a Visual Twist

One of the biggest problems with the search market is Google’s dominance. Nothing like having a dominant, aggressive player to deter new ideas and innovation from taking root, which explains why new and exciting search engines seem to be few and far between these days.

The major challenge is coming up with a search tool that is different enough from Google to attract attention. While excellent search results are absolutely necessary, there also needs to be something else to convince people to give something other than Google a try.

It’s a daunting task to take on Google - or, at least, play in the same sandbox - but SearchMe may just have a shot at becoming the new kid on the search block based on a private beta it recently unveiled.

What makes SearchMe different and particularly interesting is it search results are presented as screen shots of Web pages. It’s user-friendly and makes it quick and easy to browse through a number of different Web sites. You can search by using a category - e.g. a search for “hamburger” offers up cooking, restaurants, soccer (?), business news and astronomy (?) - or do a broad search.

Given SearchMe is in private beta, it’s impossible to measure the effectiveness of the search results but as long as they’re solid and useful, the sizzle of graphical presentation will probably be enough to satisfy the needs of most people willing to play with a new search engine. After all, who looks at search results in any search engine beyond the first page?

Based on initial impressions, SearchMe is a search engine that I could easily see as a solid alternative to Google, which is a high praise given the number of search engines that I’ve explored and thought about using - only to quickly abandon.

The other interesting thing about SearchMe is its investors, which include Sequoia, which was one of Google’s early investors. To date, SearchMe has raised $31-million, including $15-million last June. For more on SearchMe, check out BoomTown, which also has a video interview with co-founder Randy Adams.

As for SearchMe’s business model, that’s also impossible to assume but Rich Tehrani suggests an obvious route is being bought by Google or Microsoft.

From a bigger picture perspective, SearchMe is among a growing number of players looking to leverage visual search as opposed to presenting Web users with a wall of text. Another company to keep an eye on is Toronto-based Idee Inc., which is developing a cool image search engine code-named Tin Eye. Other players in the visual search market include Tiltomo, Riya and Quintura. Update: Thomas Hawk has a review on a new service called TagCow that provides photo tagging and recognition features.

For more details on how SearchMe works, check out the video below:

Technorati Tags: Google , Search Engines, SearchMe