Pagebull – A Visual Internet Search Engine

Pagebull is a visual search engine in the sense that it displays search results simply by visually displaying page thumbnails, highlighting the term(s) searched on. Some search options are available – limiting to particular country results (currently Any, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Russia, Spain, UK, USA) being the main one, though you can also limit thumbnails in 3×4, 2×6 or 4×3 format. As the search engine is data intensive they recommend a broadband connection and recent versions of browsers as well as the activation of JavaScript.

As a search engine it really isn’t anything particularly new or novel, and even the idea of showing thumbnails isn’t new either. It’s not an engine that I’d personally use for serious research, but having said that it’s not without merit either. I did find the display very useful for searches that I run on a regular basis in that it was much easier to scroll through visual depictions of pages and note differences to pages that I was familar with. I also found it quite helpful when looking for visual images in context on a page, rather than images in and of themselves. Consequently not something that I’d use on a regular basis, but I can see times when it might just fit the bill.