I've been testing out Snap.com Interesting search model. Initial reactions:
It takes longer than it should for the first set of results to pop-up. Maybe five beats vs. one for Google. It does let you refine, and the results change instantaneously, which is a nice feature, and probably does outweigh the initial wait.
You can sort results by popularity, web popularity, and satisfaction (# of pages viewed on a site).
Popularity is judged on the number of snap.com users who have clicked through to a site. Neat idea, but in a lot of categories, they need more users surfing through. That will come with time.
Web popularity is flawed at the moment, as it goes by the base of the URL, so anything with Yahoo or Amazon will rank high in it. Stories on running are the most popular in web ranking solely because they were on the cnnsi.com site vs. actually being useful.
I do think the "transparent company" idea is brillant. Showing searches, revenue, metrics is really going to make advertisers comfortable working with them. May not do much for profit margins, but I think that's really going to have some traction, vs. black box models that are out there.