Visual search is like a box of chocolates.

Last month I featured a visual search engine named VizBand. The site is as simple as can be. You type in the name of a musical artist or band and then it returns a wall of thumbnails. Clicking on one takes you to that music video from YouTube. Besides its visual appeal, the site is quite useful, because you can see a large amount of choices on one screen, and because it uses visual images for a visual medium.

Well, I think you could start a collection now of image walls. Album Art Search does the same thing that VizBand does, but with album covers. Given that we now live in an MP3 / iTunes world, this notion of “cover” art is something that will just produce blank stares from your children.

When you click on an album cover, you are taken to a larger image and a link to Amazon. So why not just start at Amazon.com? Because Album Art Search shows you 80 images on one screen. Can you imagine what a pain it would be to explore 80 items the way that Amazon presents their results? Amazon has 12 search results per page. That would mean flipping or scrolling through 6 – 7 pages, up and down, looking for a specific album. With an image wall you can do the same thing in seconds, just look – and click. If you don’t like what you find, just click “close” and try another one. It’s like a box of chocolates with 80 choices, only you don’t feel so sick afterwards.

Try it now. Click here and enter the name of an artist or band, or try one of the categories on the right hand side, see if you like it, and then leave a comment!