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Search Engine Learns From User Feedback

Posted by simoniker on from the double-meanings-never-so-confusing dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Ian Clarke, founder of the Freenet project, has set up a web search engine that allows users to rate each of the search results it returns. WhittleBit will use your feedback to determine which keywords should be added or removed from your search, then you can search again to get more accurate results. This could be useful for those cases where Google just refuses to return the search results you want. Could improved interactivity be the next big search engine advancement after Pagerank?"

2 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. I doubt this will fly by The+Bungi · · Score: 5, Informative
    People have been doing experiments like these since the first search engine was rolled off the assembly line. They're prone to abuse and dependent on the goodwill of the user. Imagine of PageRank was based on this - that "SearchKing" dude would have a bot searching for crap and then voting "yes" every time.

    Won't work. Goodwill as we knew it in '95 is gone from the Internet.

  2. Ouch - major slashdot - mirror of page by Sanity · · Score: 5, Informative
    The server is down - it was totally ill-equipped to handle a slashdotting unfortunately, I was hoping it would get some testing, but this is a bit much ;-)

    As a poor substitute to being able to play with it (try bookmarking whittlebit.com and coming back in a day or two) I will try to answer people's questions. For the moment - here is the blurb from the front page:

    What is WhittleBit?

    Have you ever searched for something and wished you could tell the search engine that it was totally on the wrong track and it should try again? Well now you can! WhittleBit works much like most other search engines, except it can help you to refine your searches by allowing you to give positive or negative feedback on each search result.

    Simply rate the search results by clicking on the "thumbs up" or "thumbs down" buttons then click on Whittle to get a refined set of search results based on your feedback.

    Tips

    • Even if you visit another site and then return, WhittleBit will remember your search query until you explicitly click the "New Search" button.
    • You can either rate a search result on the results page itself, or visit the page and rate it using the buttons at the top of the page. You will return to the WhittleBit search results after clicking one of the buttons.
    • WhittleBit requires a browser which supports "Cookies" and "Frames" such as Mozilla or Internet Explorer.
    - Ian Clarke, creator of WhittleBit