Overview
France-based Reacteur.com ( http://www.reacteur.com) is a popular search engine by Abondance ( http://www.abondance.com) and Brioude Internet ( http://www.brioude-internet.fr) launched in 2002. After the first month of integrating thumbshots in December 2003, Reacteur.com’s traffic increased by over 60%. Thumbshots are screenshots of web pages in thumbnail sizes providing users with a What You See Is What You Get preview experience.
The goal of Reacteur.com is not to compete with major search engines such as Google, Altavista or AllTheWeb. Rather, Reacteur.com is an “idea lab” to test new concepts and technologies that will improve the quality of results in search engines.
Reacteur.com and Thumbshots.org
Reacteur.com officially integrated thumbshots on December 15, 2003 into their search results from thumbshots.org. Thumbshots appear in parts of Reacteur.com search results because Thumbshots.org currently supports Web links contained in the Open Directory ( http://www.dmoz.org) only.
Reacteur.com initially ran a beta test with users before implementing thumbshots in its public site. “Most people like this function. We put it in beta test and launched a discussion about it on our forum. We put it live few days after”, said Olivier Andrieu from Reacteur.com. The thumbshots integration process is simple and elegant requiring just a few extra lines of codes.
After one month of integrating thumbshots, Reacteur.com’s search queries increased by over 60%. Olivier expects the number of search requests to reach 6 Million for January 2004. The Web site has gotten so popular and so quickly that it is now facing growing pains. "The server has been down some hours this week, too much simultaneous requests" says Olivier in a happy way. This is definitely a sign of what users want to see in search engines and things are going in the right direction for Reacteur.com. So far, “no email to tell us that it was a bad idea :-)” according to recent e-mail conversation with Olivier.
Thumbshots.org works closely with Olivier Andrieu of Reacteur.com and other sites to study the impact of previews in search engines. “We listen to all our users, if we did something to thumbshots that they don’t like, we remove it right away. If they suggest something useful, we add it immediately. Our goal is to deliver a truly unique What You See Is What You Get experience”, said one of the organizers of Thumbshots.org.
About Thumbshots.org
The Open Thumbshots Project ( http://www.thumbshots.org) is an open and non-profit initiative by Smartdevil.com ( http://www.smartdevil.com) that contributes back to the Internet community. Thumbshots.org provides free thumbshot preview images available for download and by direct request. Thumbshots.org is made possible through community efforts and donations.
About Open Directory Project
The Open Directory ( http://www.dmoz.org) is the most widely distributed database of Web content classified by humans. Its editorial standards body of net-citizens provide the collective brain behind resource discovery on the Web. The Open Directory powers the core directory services for the Web's largest and most popular search engines and portals, including Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, Lycos, HotBot, DirectHit, and hundreds of others.