SnapShots

[mikomido]

What do you think of these? I find them very annoying as a user and terrible as a Web master.

I wish to block these, but what is their User-agent?

[stapel]

mikomido said: ...I find them very annoying as a user and terrible as a Web master. I wish to block these....

"Snapshots" are just pictures. Do you mean "Snap Shots [snap.com]", the brower add-on from snap.com?

If so, then, if you don't want windows popping up on your web site, don't insert the coding for their windows into your HTML.

If you don't want your site to display in those windows (from links on other sites), then forbid the "SnapPreviewBot" in your "robots.txt" file.

If you don't want to see those windows when you view some other site, then follow the instructions [snap.com] provided by Snap.com for turning off the display.

Eliz.

[vincevincevince]

What is terrible about them 'as a webmaster'?

I've found them useful in the past as it is easy to spot a MFA from even a tiny snapshot...

[mikomido]

As a Web master, it eats bandwidth. As a user, it's incredibly annoying when stupid #*$! pop up when I hover links. It's just a like those IntelliTxt ads.

[Marshall]

I use snapshots on my theater directory web site and have it set so you have to curse the snapshot image, not the link, to get the preview. I felt having the preview pop up EVERY TIME you curse a link would be annoying, given the fact there are hundreds of external links, so I put a little "tip" at the top of the page (in light gray in reference to another thread :)) to the effect "curse over the [snapshot image here] to preview the web site." I have been using it for about a month with no complaints. I guess that is not bad. As for performance, it has not affected the site at all - no noticeable difference in download times. And those companies who have listings on the site have commented that they think it is a neat effect. Who am I to argue.

Marshall

[vincevincevince]

What bandwidth does it eat? These snapshots never update very regularly, and when they do it's just a single page load - equivalent to one click from the SERPs. The images themselves are fully cached and served from the provider's domain - not from your server.

If you don't like them, that's fair enough, but lots of webmasters and users do find them either useful or nice.