ICQ Google using thumbnail images in search results

Xerox PARC report predicted thumbnail efficacy

[Winooski]

A colleague just alerted me to the fact that ICQ.com has a version of Google [google.icq.com] which incorporates thumbnail images of most of the search results. I scoured WebmasterWorld but couldn't find mention of it, so this may actually be news.

I remember enjoying the 2001 Xerox PARC report, "Using Thumbnails to Search the Web" [www2.parc.com], in which the researchers determined that searchers utilizing results with thumbnails took less time to find what they were looking for. If I recall correctly, search results which used a regular thumbnail image of the pages were more successful than old-fashioned plaintext search results, but most successful of all were search results which used a modified "caricature" version which exaggerated the keywords in the thumbnail.

Any other SEs using thumbnails out there?

[nicebloke]

I've certainly not seen that before. Cool.

MSN have been playing around with a 'preview' thumbnail thingy for a while now.

[vitaplease]

Thats new to me as well - nice find.

Other than Alexa I have not seen Google results with thumbnails.

[ams_david]

They seem to have more recent thumbnail images then Alexa, which is nice. It'd be nicer still if both sites did thumbnails per page, not just per domain.

[jcoronella]

I think they all use girafa's technology.

[your_store]

I would say that ICQ is using a different screen capture method than Alexa, or at least an updated version. Reason being that certain grey areas on my site show up as green on Alexa while they are rendered correctly in the ICQ thumnails.

[Chndru]

But any ideas on what's the use in showing the thumbnails?

[dillonstars]

I like the idea of having thumbnails in searches very much.

I know that you're not supposed to judge a book by it's cover, but sometimes a visual preview might show you that a site has been well designed and therefore should be easy to use, or a home made looking web page may have unbiased non-commercial information on it.

Also sites that follow a well known brand 'look and feel' can assure visitors of the brand identity (and therefore quality) with having to rely on written assurances.

I know that there will always be exceptions to the rule, but I like the idea.... Just my 2 cents

Rob

[TravelSite]

Great!

I'll think I'll use this as my main google search from now on :)

[msgraph]

Thumbnails in the results are awesome. I still won't use Alexa but I hope to see more SE's use the feature in the future.

If you are searching on a broad topic where sites can cover totally different areas yet titles and descriptions are hard to discriminate, thumbnails allow you to get an idea of which one might suit your needs. Also, they let you weed through some of the garbage that might not have anything to offer on the topic at all.

[jomaxx]

Agree that it's a nice feature, but since the vast proportion of search results are probably deep pages, which often have only a tenuous connection to the domain root page, I don't really see the point.