Search 2.0
Ebrahim Ezzy and Richard MacManus over at Read/Write Web put together a nice summary of Search 2.0 and how it compares to traditional search. They define Search 2.0 as the third generation search technologies and that they are:
...designed to combine the scalability of existing internet search engines with new and improved relevancy models; they bring into the equation user preferences, collaboration, collective intelligence, a rich user experience, and many other specialized capabilities that make information more productive.1
In their post—which by the way is part 1 of a 2-part series—they examine 5 different Search 2.0 companies. They point out a key feature of each and also compare it to traditional search (e.g. Google).
What was interesting for me is that when I went to try the search engines they mentioned, 2 of them were down, 2 required a setup process, and several of them were simply returning Google results with their own "value add", such as clustering.
Does having to train a search engine or relying on an unknown communities' rankings really further search? I have always felt that technology should help automate things for us, not require more effort on our part. The lure of Google was—and is in my opinion—the simple page with only one thing to do, enter a search term. And you could be reasonably certain that you would find the information you wanted within the first couple result pages.
I must admit, I did like some of the added functionality in Clusty—although as part owner in a Branding firm, it feels wrong to mention anyone named Clusty.
I noticed a couple of comments to the post with which are worth highlighting:
- ...I think the people that want all this Search 2.0 nonsense are the people having trouble coming up with a comprehensible list of phrases to describe what they're talking about...
- Part of being a good search is... uptime! (and speed).
[1] Search 2.0 vs Traditional Search, http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/search_20_vs_tr.php, posted July 20, 2006, viewed July 21, 2006↩
August 20, 2006 at 6:10 PM
Have you seen this search site?
http://www.snap.com
It's pretty neat. The suggestive search terms are addictive. It gave me ideas for other things that had me hooked to search more!
August 22, 2006 at 12:13 AM
Laura--I hadn't seen snap.com. I gave it a look and it has a very interesting interface. Thanks for pointing it out.
An interesting thing occurred when I went to the site. My first question was--who is providing the search results, and then when I discovered it was Ask.com, it instantly swayed my perception of the site (I won't say good or bad). The results are definitely presented in a nicer format that Ask. I just find it intriguing that I was looking for that instant credibility of search results. Perhaps I need to give it a try for a while and judge it on it's own merits.