Rich Skrenta and team at blekko are launching “izik,” a new tablet search engine (and browser) designed to deliver a “from the ground up,” tablet friendly search experience. You can also use it on the PC; however the experience is best on a tablet.
It’s available as an app for the iPad or Android tablets. There’s a mobile web version as well.
Google has incrementally sought to make the SERP more tablet friendly but it still does largely resemble the PC experience. By contrast izik relies heavily on images and presents results in a category or “federated” view.
Users swipe or scroll horizontally to see more results in each category or can expand any individual category to see more content. I compared a wide range of search queries and results on izik to Google and found that izik immediately surfaced more information and made it more visually accessible.
There were a few areas were izik didn’t perform quite as well as Google in my brief tests: recent news, image search and local.
However izik was easy and more pleasing to use and is a very viable Google alternative right out of the box. It will also improve over time. The technology and index behind izik are the same as that which power blekko.
The following are some side-by-side comparisons of izik and Google results for the same queries:
Query: “Prague”
Query: “Washington Redskins”
Query: “Kate Middleton”
As you can see, the izik pages “pop” more and are easier to navigate visually. There’s more information on the page than with page 1 of Google. Buttons or tabs on the bottom enable users to quickly navigate through the different categories of results. Overall it’s a strong user experience.
Download the app or test izik on the mobile web and compare it to Google. Let us know whether you agree or disagree with my remarks.
Below is a video tour of izik.
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