Unofficially obsessed with Google.


Add Previews to Search Results

2/28/2006 05:41:00 PM


Foremost in the Googlist's collection of Google-related productivity tools is a Firefox extension called GooglePreview, which allows me to see inline thumbnail previews of Google search results. These previews help me filter out spam sites, splogs, and completely off topic search results at a glance. I can also quickly identify search results that link to trusted sites I visit often. Overall, previews boost research efficiency by improving relevancy and decreasing experimental clickthroughs. Eventually these thumbnails should be a standard feature in the big search sites, but for now, here's the Googlist's list of tools for building your own search previews (feel free to suggest additional solutions in the comments):

Add Previews in Firefox:
GooglePreview adds thumbnails to Google, Yahoo, etc, one click turns extension on/off
BetterSearch adds thumbnails to Google, Yahoo, del.icio.us, A9, etc, adds more site info per result

To really maximize your search power, set your Google search results per page to 20 or higher so you can scan more results at once. Even though image loading causes a short delay, equivalent text results load immediately, so you don't lose time with these extensions, you just gain efficiency in your click throughs.

Add Previews in IE:
Girafa Toolbar adds thumbnails to Google, MSN, Yahoo, AOL, etc, collect thumbs of favorite sites in a sidebar
MSN Search Toolbar Add-in only for MSN, must have MSN Toolbar

Access Thumbnail Databases:
Girafa
Thumbshots
Alexa

Search Sites with Preview Features:
Alexa
ICQ Search
Find Forward
Exalead
Don Busca
Search (user must activate thumbnails)

1 Comments:

Anonymous special essays said...

Thanks for a well-written and interesting article!
6:57 AM

 

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