AOL France has launched a beta feature on Netscape.fr : the visual navigation (http://www.netscape.fr/rech?enc=iso&q=searchenginewatch&p=se). Three results view are proposed : textual (classic view), thumbnail (text + screenshot of the URL) and full visual.
This feature will be offered on AOL.fr within a few weeks.

they even offer thumbshots on ads. (at least they did for the ebay ad if you searched for nintendo)
http://www.netscape.fr/rech?enc=iso&q=nintendo&p=wf&style=0

These thumbnails grow on you after a while.

Does this mean that we search marketers now have to perform "thumbnail optimization"...

Not to mention thumbnail spamming...

People could start designing sites so they looked legit at full-size, but when shrunken down to thumbnail size, actually spelled out a call to action like "click here"...

And don't forget the people who would trick the engine into showing a thumbnail of ebay, but link to a totally different site.

That would be funny, thumbnail cloaking.

So serve up pure keyword text to the search engines for the placement, serve up exotic homepage graphic for the search engine thumbnail and then serve up your site to the end user.

New breed of spam. Thumbnail spam.

You may be interested to know that AOL.FR and Netscape.FR web search engines are powered by Exalead and that Exalead is also behind the "related searches" and "thumbnail" technologies used by these portals.

Each page in the index has its own thumbnail (instead of just having thumbnails for home pages and/or pages in the directory). This project is currently a beta on Netscape and will be deloyed on the other French AOL portals in the near future.

Also check out the related searches technology (try http://www.netscape.fr/rech?q=neural+networks) keeping in mind that the index is French-centric at this stage on Netscape.fr. Exalead has also announced that it will index one billion web pages (world-wide index) early this fall on its own web site www.exalead.com, with some pretty cool new features...

bourdonc,

Thank you for the clarification and welcome to the forums!

I forgot to mention the integrated in-context audio and video search (click on the "Audio" and "Video" links that appear on the result line at the top). Audio and video files are presented in the context of the web pages that point to them, in order to make it easier to determine the relevancy of the files.

I really like the thumbshots! I'm gonna go put it on my site right away.

How easy/difficult is it to add the preview from http://www.thumbshots.com to a search engine?

Thanks! They look really cool. :p

You can try their free version at http://www.thumbshots.org first. The installation part is very simple if you know some kind of scripting. Check their integration page, and faq. The thumbshots idea is definitely cute.

I think there are a few sites that gives out free directories with their thumbshots. Maybe ask if they can help you integrate for a small fee. :cool:

Papaya
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http://mexico.udg.mx/

To come back to aol.fr, it is time for them to act, as their share of the French search market (http://www.barometre-referencement.com/) is going down and down..