Here's how it goes with most search engines. You type your query, get your results, then click a link to see if it's what you were after. No luck? Click the back button to return to the results, then click another link. Wash, rinse, repeat.

That's why I'm crazy-enthused about MelZoo. Though it has arguably the worst name since Cuil, it's one of the smartest search engines I've ever seen. Why? Because it puts the hits in one pane and the actual pages in another.

In other words, it's split-screen search--and it's downright ingenious. After MelZoo fetches your search results, you just mouse over one to see its destination in the righthand pane. If you want to go to that page, just click anywhere on it.

MelZoo's not perfect. It doesn't have any kind of image-search capability, and I found its searches to be a little slow. Plus, there's definitely a slight delay as you mouse over each result.

It would be nice if you had the option of interacting with the site inside the preview pane instead of just viewing it.

But my only real gripe is that MelZoo doesn't remember how you've resized the two panes from one session to the next. (I like a smaller results pane so I can have a bigger preview.)

Even so, I've already bookmarked MelZoo, which is particularly fabulous if you have a widescreen monitor. Definitely worth a look.