Why didn’t Google Think Of This … a Cool Search with Preview

August 31, 2009 13 Comments
Topics]Web AppsAuthor]

Yes, Google has got the most popular search engine on the planet, and yes it has quite a few useful features. For me though, it does lack one important feature, and that is the ability to visually preview a site before actually clicking to enter. A thumbnail preview if you like. When compiling a design article, I quite often have hundreds of time-consuming tabs open with the potential and hope of finding a good resource and life would be so much easier if I could have had a preview beforehand. I have tried some Firefox extensions, some web apps and even some desktop applications that have given me a thumbnail of each site, I was more often than not disappointed, though. The thumbs would be either of a low resolution or whenever I clicked to enter a thumbnail preview, the page content would be completely different to the actual preview image.

This brings me to the reason why I am writing this post. I found such a search engine, with not only thumbnail preview, but REAL-TIME thumbnail preview. Which means when you enter your search term, the images it delivers are real-time snapshots of the actual site you plan to visit. Cool, just what I needed. Oh, by the way, it is called Murgurdy Search. When I first found Murgurdy Search, a few months ago, it was by invite only, so I tried, and loved it. It is now open to everyone, so I thought I would share this great app with everyone.

Murgurdy Search

The Murgurdy Search Engine

Mugurdy is a rich visual search engine that delivers relevant, live results faster to every kind of Internet user. The site lets visitors browse arrays of Web pages – or the images of those Web pages – before clicking through to a selected site. With Mugurdy you can ‘visit’ 12 actual pages or more of the Web in the time it takes to read one page of Google’s results.

Murgurdy Search Results for “News”

Murgurdy Search

Murgurdy Search with clicked High-Res Preview

Murgurdy Search

Why would you want to use Mugurdy?

Traditional Search Engines such as Google have ‘cached’, or saved results which may be several days or weeks old. Mugurdy’s web views are live. So for example a search for ‘news’ will show live the websites of news sources and their current images and content rather than a text list of news sources days or weeks old – and then not their actual content (like newspaper front pages), but descriptions of them.

About the Author: (552 Articles)

Paul Andrew is the editor and founder of Speckyboy Design Magazine. You can follow Speckyboy on Twitter, on Facebook, on Digg or you can subscribe via RSS.

Comments and Reactions

  • http://webmuch.com Aayush

    It’s nice, but I’d still like Google the way it is. With Google it’s all about speed and better results…

    In Mugurdy’s case it’s more about experience, which is not good either on the results page, but I think they’ll make it better in time.

  • http://www.devwords.com Ben

    Keep it simple, stupid

  • http://scarletbits.com iris

    good point :D nice post! thanks

  • http://deathlock.wordpress.com Xaliber von Reginhild

    Why Google didn’t think of this?

    I doubt this didn’t cross their minds, but one thing for sure: not all internet users have decent internet connection.

    Broadband users might not seeing this as a problem, but dial up users will. I was one of them, so I know how it feels to wait a slow loading page. Especially if it contains too many image and JS. Really got my nerves.

    Perhaps while people praise tech-savvy search engines with features and such they tend to forgot the main factor that might drive visitors away from websites: loading speed.

  • scotty

    didn’t read any of the other posts so i’m not sure if this was mentioned but firefox has an extension called google preview that’s exactly what you’re talking about.

  • TTC

    Why should google do this? It’s kinda confusing!

    I think this service is gratuitous.

  • Alice

    I agree with some other comments – the magic of Google is it’s ease and simplicity, even on slow internet connection. However, I can see the benefits of this preview thing and don’t see why Google couldn’t build it in as an option, kind of like the “I’m feeling lucky” button, maybe a “view preview” button??

  • edward

    yeah! loading matters! if its simple, better! if you really want to preview the site before clicking it, try to use mozilla browser and install ad on like “Google Preview”, thats it!

  • http://www.symbie.de Homepage

    Hey nice i like this kind of preview!

  • http://www.empfehlenswert-wien.at wien

    cool thank u

  • http://www.aoclarkejr.com/blog.html AJ

    Not a Big Fan…

  • Pingback: Mugurdy - un motor de cautare cu preview | Bag tare in blogosfera romaneasca

  • masterofsuspense

    This is a marketters dream. Every site would have an attractive splash page intended to attract customers to their sites.

    No need to pay Google for ads, you can advertise your own site, and with a picture no less.

    Not to mention, what porn sites would do ;)