Does anybody really understand Snap.com?

Snap is a different kind of search engine that is trying to deliver results in a new way. Here's how they are getting results explained from their website as a new feature:

The second new feature is USER FEEDBACK. We take into account what happens AFTER people click on search listings at our site AND others, to use as feedback on the relevance, and get you better results up at the top. This helps you avoid dead end searches, and saves you time. We also can figure out, based on millions of users, what people are really looking for so we can put custom formats on search pages where previous users signaled their “intent” by their follow-on searches.



So the idea must be a democratization of search results. So the behavior of what you do after you find a website will help determine rank. They're saying that the more searches that are done on their site, the more accurate the search results will be. This search engine has some really marginal results right now. Try a few of your favorite terms and see what you get. I'm seeing a lot of blog material that is unrelated to a subject and some general information sites that were not relevant at all.

So instead of an algorithm determining search rank, Snap will do it through how users click through. This may be good in the future, but it doesn't mean that it's going to be good for someone looking for a bit of information. If all you get are the most popular sites, then you're going to have to dig to find something other than the beauty contest winner. I think that it sounds good to let people decide, but it has it's flaw of popular sites dominating without good variety. It's similar to what I found on a shopping meta-search engine last week. The companies involved in the local shopping experience were only national chains!

So far, the amount of searchers they've gotten to use it are relatively few. One of the things that they brag about is their open statistics, but who cares? Searchers are into relevant results finding what they want to find. They don't care about a company's revenues, transparency of operation or anything like that. They want a good search result and so far Snap doesn't have enough user feedback to deliver it, yet. Search algorithms are still the best way to get good search results and will continue to be so in the future.

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