The Importance of Web Design in Search

Have you seen the new “visual” search engines, Viewzi and SearchMe? They both give you a preview of the websites in their search results. You can see a thumbnail of the page before you click.

With Viewzi, you type in your query and then pick among many different formats: video x3 view, 3D photo cloud view, basic photo view, simple text, web screenshot, etc. Then you see the thumbnail in that format before downloading the page.

With SearchMe, you type your query and then select categories below (advertising & marketing, search engines, computer networking, business news, radio or search all). Then you see some nice size thumbnails you can click on to download the page.

This makes Web Site and page design more important than ever. While Google isn’t doing this yet, Ask provides page previews.

Imagine how such a feature might affect search marketing as the trend toward social and visual interaction takes hold on the web. The impression your page preview makes before eliciting a click will be crucial as web design and content drive traffic.