By Colette Sandstedt. Colette handles PR for Searchme.

Yesterday Randy sent around an email asking everyone to vote on a name for one of our new products. Most everyone voted, regardless of department, and judging from the chatter around the SF office afterward, everyone certainly had an opinion. This is one of the things I like about working for Searchme - people really want to hear your ideas, and once you put them forth, they actually consider them. And the whole voting thing turned out to be a great bonding experience, because it started people talking about what we were doing, and it made me, at least, feel like I had an even bigger stake in our new product.

Lorenz Trockle is a search analyst at Searchme.com.

From a search analyst’s point of view, a search engine is not unlike a visit to an art gallery. At a gallery, you are presented with a painting or a sculpture, but you have to make sense of it on your own terms. Sometimes you recognize the artist and know what to expect, but more often, you see something astoundingly new and you have to grasp for words and meaning to fit the image.

In a similar way, my task at Searchme is less about search and more about figuring out a user’s intent. When I get handed a search, that search is devoid of any guidance or code. I have to choose from a myriad of web sites, try to figure out which one best illustrates the concept of the user’s search, and return that as a result.

However, Searchme has a distinct difference from traditional search engines - we can deliver visual elements like videos or images straight to the user instead of just text. What this means is that we are shaping our search in a different context, and as such, we are evolving our own distinct “voice.” This voice is giving rise to a more visual, self-organized system, one that will give users a better search experience by taking them straight to the visual context they expect.

It’s great to see how different professions are using Searchme. For example, Searchme’s features seem to have a lot of value for lawyers and people doing legal research.

Over at the New York Civil Law blog, they write:

I came across this search engine that I thought you would be interested in… This search engine provides query results by visually depicting the screen shots displayed like those old-time juke boxes.

And Law.com’s Legal Technology blog gives an example:

“As I type “antonin scalia,” for example, icons appear for U.S. government, courts, politicians, U.S. news and history. I can select one of these icons or ignore them and search across topics. The icons remain visible throughout, so you can narrow your search at any time.”

By Jennifer English. Jennifer recently joined Searchme’s Search Quality team and works on analyzing search results for specific characteristics and relevancy.

I have been working for almost 12 years in the field of web taxonomy and search quality, and I was drawn to Searchme because of the visual interface and the category structure that allows users to narrow down their search results. However, Searchme’s great interface and category structure would be fairly useless if the results we returned were not good enough to keep users on the Searchme page to take advantage of them. That’s where search quality comes in.

Since my job is analyzing search results, I have to be impartial. In my personal life, I admit to being a bit of a snob in terms of art, music, movies, books, and other aspects of culture. On the job, though, I set aside my likes and dislikes. The quality of search results for gossip on a hot pop star or actor becomes just as important as for research on an academic subject.

Several years ago, I organized and led a project to satisfy search results for the most popular search terms on a large web directory. Inevitably, some of my team members complained about having to look into results for the ten millionth iteration of Leonardo DiCaprio searches. “Shouldn’t we be working on something more important?” was the periodic complaint.

In responding, I liked to draw a parallel to asking a question at a public library reference desk. A good librarian will treat all questions as equally important and try to find the best answers for everybody. I believe that search engines should act in the same way.

Analyzing search results all day can be challenging at times, but it is highly satisfying to look at a set of results that I’ve just evaluated and imagine how nice it will be for the user to find the relevant information, whether it be for symptoms of a health condition, lyrics to a favorite song, or background for a research paper.

And, as an added bonus, this work allows me to converse easily on a variety of topics, with everyone from teenagers to grandparents!

By Deva Santiago. Deva does all the hiring and recruiting for Searchme.com.

Right now we have a lot of open positions here at Searchme. We’re growing quickly and we’re always looking for good folks, so I thought I’d list some of the things that employees have mentioned about why they like working here:

- You get to work on a cool and truly innovative product.
- It’s an interesting culture with a fun group of people, and a little weird is OK.
- Creative, open-minded colleagues.
- The company fosters leadership, initiative and ideas.
- Commitment to open communication.
- Great atmosphere.
- Great team.
- Great locations: You can work in Mountain View or SF.
- We’re working towards the best solution, not any one person’s solution.
- If you enjoy solving problems and doing things that have never been done before, this is the place.

If any of this sounds interesting to you, please drop us a line at jobs@searchme.com!

Scott Berg, Hewlett-Packard’s Worldwide Media Director, muses about visual search and Searchme on his HP blog, ‘The Changing Face of Media’:

“I’m fascinated on the direction(s) search is starting to take…. Where search begins to be even more user friendly and visually appealing.”

Thanks to the folks at Decreased Sales, “A Blog about Books and Computers”, for this:

“I’ve started using Searchme as my primary search engine, and I’m impressed.”

Thanks what we like to hear! Thank you.

By Aaron Curtiss. Aaron is an internal tools developer assisting the Search Quality department in Searchme’s efforts to improve relevance and classification.

According to Wikipedia, “Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of improving the volume and quality of traffic to a web site from search engines via ‘natural’ (‘organic’ or ‘algorithmic’) search results for targeted keywords. Usually, the earlier a site is presented in the search results or the higher it ‘ranks’, the more searchers will visit that site.”

It’s that last sentence that’s interesting, because with a visual interface like Searchme, it’s not quite the same ‘punishment’ if your site is ranked 9th or 10th instead of 1st or 2nd.

With visual search, people are more likely to get to your site in a set of search results and more able to determine if it’s the one they need, even if it’s not in the top five results. This is because visual search lets people scroll through web pages extremely quickly and identify the relative strength of a site, often without reading a single word. They can see instantly whether or not a site is what they want, because the visual representation of a site has higher information yield than page titles and snippets. This means that users are more likely to get the result they want the first time they click through, instead of going back and forth on text-only links, so they can afford to scroll through more results.

What effect might this have on SEO? Much remains to be seen, but it’s safe to say that the authoritative and traditional definition given above will no longer suffice. When users can actually see whether a page will most likely answer their search query, the meaning of relevance changes.

One outcome that users could hope for is that designers and optimizers will start to aim not just for page rank, but for more effective visual communication of a site’s information. Visual search could promote a more holistic and multi-dimensional approach to SEO, one that brings users closer to the overall content and purpose (and quality) of a site, more quickly.

In sum, visual search is changing SEO, and we’re excited about the ways in which visual information is going to play a role in improving relevance and getting people to the information they want more quickly.

By John Holland, Co-Founder and CMO.

A few weeks ago, Jason Calacanis authored a controversial blog post about how start-ups can save money. I recognized several techniques that actually work well at Searchme, and I wanted to comment on a few of Jason’s tips:

Buy Macintosh computers, save money on an IT department.

Macs rule, and they are the obvious choice for any self-respecting start-up. Even our hardcore UNIX geeks are Mac’n out and loving it. Not only are we saving money, but our employees are pretty psyched.

Buy everyone lunch four days a week and establish a no-meetings policy.

We don’t have a no-meetings policy (one can dream). But we do serve lunch four days a week, and it works great. Going out for lunch is expensive, and making lunch in the morning can be a pain. We all pretty much love having no-hassle meals spoon-fed to us Monday through Thursday - we sit around family-style and have a great time. And you can still bring your own lunch or go out; we’re not holding anyone hostage!

Don’t buy a phone system.

After 3 years, we just got our phone system, and I hate it. I much prefer my cell phone. Having to maintain two different numbers sucks. Don’t call my desk phone; I don’t answer it or check the messages!

Buy your hardest-working folks computers for home.

Better yet, get a Macbook Pro for anyone who wants one and they’ll love you for it. Everyone at Searchme pretty much gets to choose his or her primary CPU, and most people just want a MacBook Pro. Everyone’s happy.

Get an expensive, automatic espresso machine at the office.

For some reason, we don’t have many coffee drinkers at Searchme, so it’s not really an issue. But we do have a fancy coffee machine in our Mountain View office.

Stock the fridge with soda — same drill as above.

Actually, we like Vitamin Water and Izze sodas. Plus, some really good snacks, including my favorite: Swedish Fish. They’re quite popular! Is this really manipulating employees? We just think it’s the right thing to do.

BONUS TIP: Get a WII

Everyone has fun whacking virtual tennis balls or shredding out on guitar hero!

I decided to write about these items because I think they are things that actually improve the Searchme culture. Work is always going to be work, but you might as well enjoy it! Now if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to take a break and play some Guitar Hero!

John

Today we’re liking the folks over at TrendCentral, who forecast trends for Gen X, Gen Y and Tweens. They kindly mentioned Searchme in ‘Cool Websites To Bookmark’:

“With visual search being predicted as where the search category will be heading in the future, this site is one to watch.”

Thanks, guys!