Add Snap Previews to Any Site For Free

One thing people really like about the Snap search engine is that it gives a large preview screen of every search result. The idea is that users can save time by seeing the site before they click to it. That can be an advantage when wading through increasingly sophisticated SEO and spoof sites that aren’t relevant to your search. Snap has 300 million stored site images, updated regularly, and adds new ones as unique searches are performed. The search engine is now serving up to 50,000 searches per day.

Last week they launched Snap Preview Anywhere, a free service that lets any site owner add previewing technology to their sites. When installed, every link on the site (internal links are optional) will show a preview of the linked site when a viewer hovers over the link. To see how it works, hover over the “Try Snap Preview Anywhere here” link near the top of this page. Snap Product Evangelist Jason Fields and Business Development executive Joseph Sarmiento gave me a demo of Snap Preview Anywhere at the Web 2.0 Summit last week.

The preview optionally includes a Snap search box, and large partners are eligible to negotiate a revenue share with Snap based on usage. For others, having the preview functionality will be incentive enough.

Someone has already created a wordpress plugin for the functionality as well, which makes installation easier.

Since launching a few days ago, Snap reports that 500 sites have integrated the functionality and 70,000 page previews have been created. Note related services Browster and Cooliris, which users can integrate into their browser to view page previews for certain links on any site.