Enhanced Thumbnails by PARC

[msgraph]

Enhanced Thumbnails are a patented visualization technique that makes it easier to find relevant content quickly within documents and document collections.

Enhanced Thumbnails [parc.com]

The concept is great when applied to web site thumbnail images because you can see where all the query keywords are placed. For example, if you are searching for a informational article on a product review, you have the chance to see how often those keywords are placed around the document. That page will probably have more information on what you are looking for than say some site that has the keyword placed once or twice.

The only problem is that they are a bit awkward looking.

Demonstration: Enhanced Thumbnails for Web Search [parc.com]

Google has a similar concept going on with their toolbar and cache highlight feature. Also, Google has mentioned before that they were interested in snapshots of the web.

Do you think we'll see something like this in the future for a major search service?

[booty]

I think it will, Alexa already has snapshots and since it teamed up with google we thus have a search with thumbnails.
combine that with the goole catalogs seen before and i think we will soon see a major search engine using "enhanced thumbnails"