RedZee.com - A Visual Search Engine with “Character”
RedZee.com is an visual search engine, with a very attractive and alternative interface of it’s search results. Instead of presenting it’s visitors with a list of web sites, RedZee provides an arching scroll feature that can be dragged using mouse inputs.
The one word I would probably describe this site, would be character… literally. The first thing you notice when you visit the homepage, is very large flash animation of a Red Zebra character. Hence the name “red zee”.
While it does provide you with a very attractive and enjoyable interface, i did find a few quirks with the search results and usability that might present challenges for some visitors and will detail those in the following paragraphs.
The Interface
As I mentioned above, this site is all about character. From the logo, the animation, to the scrolling features… it’s a very well thought out and designed site. The search results are presented in an arching, scrollable gallery that users can click and drag to see additional results.
Since the site doesn’t provide you with a standard, list type search results page, the site first starts out by presenting you with a small pop up screen that informs you how to interact with the interface.
Once you find a site that you’d like to explore, you need to double click on the result to see the web page. This is a different approach and one that some people might have a little difficulty working. However, considering the click and drag interface for the search results, this is the obvious way to handle it.
After you’ve double clicked on a page you’d like to explore, you’re presented with a framed page with a set of tabs on the top and the resulting page in the center. This is an interesting feature, however there’s no real way (that I could see) of closing the framed page and just seeing the results.
This is one feature that I did have an issue with, considering it hampers my ability to fully interact with the site I found. If I want to actually visit the site - without the RedZee tabs - I need open a new window and type the site in directly or do a right click and open the frame in a new page.
The Search Results
The search results and data RedZee returns are decent and provide the typical of an average alternative search engine. One interesting thing to note, is that the search results don’t bring you past what would normally be found on the first few pages.
For example, when I did a search for “Strollers”, RedZee returned approximately 60 different sites. However, the same search performed by Google returned over 18 million different results.
Now, this isn’t actually a bad thing, considering the majority of the search users don’t go past the first two pages… so, there’s really no reason to beyond a few dozen results.
One additional element that I would like to mention is the minimal amount of advertising on the search results page. As a matter of fact, there’s only 1 advertising on the search results page… cleverly placed just below the arching search results gallery.
Conclusion
One of the fastest growing segments of the search genre is visual search. Each seems to have it’s own unique style or approach to the presentation of the results. Redzee may not be groundbreaking in it’s technology or data collection… but it definately get two thumbs up for the presentation.
