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.