A9.com with Syndicated Search

joeykiller writes "Search Engine Watch reports that Amazon now lets you add your own search to their A9 search engine. Users can opt-in to use additional search engines in addition to A9.com's own when searching. Amazon has chosen to use an extension of RSS 2.0 for this, and hopes that this format will enable search syndication in the same way RSS did for content. Several add-on searches are available already, among them New York Times, Wikipedia and NASA."

Comments

Re:Google api?

[GMO]

can't you use the google api:

http://www.google.com/apis/

?

Also check out IceRocket

[mcgroarty]

IceRocket offers an RSS link on every search page so you can add the term to your aggregator or your My Yahoo! page. It also has the ability to search blogs explicitly and as it knows what is and isn't a blog, seems to do a better job of keeping blogs from rising to the top of every search as Google too often does.

I use IceRocket for most of my non-technical searches these days, and use Google for technical searches. Nothing beats Google when you know a few rare keywords guaranteed to be on the page you want, but I find its utility has been on the wane for general interest pages.

Re:Have it your way

[ambrosine10]

Why would you do that when you can set up your own keywords in Firefox (no plugins) so that you can just type "imdb moviename" or "wiki topic" or "g search" and get your searches right from the address bar?

Extending RSS...

[ImaLamer]

They aren't just making up new rules to existing protocol and expecting the world to change along with them.

Read:

OpenSearch RSS 1.0 is an extension to the RSS 2.0 standard, conforming to the guidelines for RSS extensibility as outlined by the RSS 2.0 specification. The intent is to provide a standard format for returning results for a search query. This extension is designed to be backward compatible with existing RSS readers.

Version 1.0 of OpenSearch RSS adds only three new elements, each within the openSearch XML namespace. Additionally, OpenSearch 1.0 makes recommendations on how existing RSS 2.0 elements can be best used within a search context.

Future versions of OpenSearch RSS will attempt to maintain backwards compatibility with OpenSearch RSS 1.0. More complicated search extensions to RSS 2.0, such as language selection, encoding type, spelling suggestions, multi-media results, sponsored links, etc, will be done in such a way as to keep OpenSearch RSS easy to implement and interpret.

Besides, they are only extending the RSS 2.0 namespace... something done quite often. http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/07/23/extendingrss.h tml

Re:Have it your way

[nother_nix_hacker]

It's already possible. Try going to Google.com and rightclicking in the main input box (where you would type your search query) and you should see a "Add a keyword for this search..." menu item.

If you click this the bookmarks dialog will appear. Add a name (Google) and a keyword (g) and you will be able to search google by typing:

g "Linux TCO"

In your URL bar

Re:Have it your way

[ozric99]

Firefox has been able to do that kind of thing ever since I started using it.

Add a bookmark and use the following fields:

Location:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie =UTF-8&oe=UTF -8&q=%s

Keyword:
g

Now, whenever you want to search google just type "g searchterm".

You can do the same with IMDB, Amazon, Wikipedia, dictionary.com... anything that allows you to use http get to search.

First attempts of disruptive innovation?

[cgrand]

If web services (broad sense : google, amazon, ebay, blogger, wikipedia...; not the WS-* sense) standardize their input/output they are commoditazing what they make a living of.
Their added values are going to drop and new entrants will offer new services built upon the commoditized ones.
The problem is that nobody expects the new services and everybody will recognize them when they appear. It's a hard turn to take for the current rulers.
Is Amazon starting to shoot itself (and its peers) in the foot?