Search 2.0 vs. Traditional Search

ReadWriteWeb writes "Ebrahim Ezzy reviews 5 new third-generation search technologies — and how they compare to the big guns of Google, Yahoo and MSN. These so-called "search 2.0" companies are combining 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. The new search engines profiled are Swicki, Rollyo, Clusty, Wink and Lexxe." Note, as the article points out, that the author has developed yet another search engine, called Qube.

Comments

Clusty

[PinkyDead]

Ok... I was looking for something yesterday on Google, but couldn't find it.

Tried out the clusty solution, and found what I was looking for very rapidly. TFA is correct it feels like a cross between Google and eBay.

There something to that. I can see Google copying it.

I didn't try the others because they looked like too much hassle. One of the original appeals of Google was the simplicity.

Re:Clusty

[AlXtreme]

I've switched to using only Clusty last fall, and I must say that I rarely use Google anymore (only if I really can't find anything using Clusty, which happens about once or twice a month, or need Scholar). The clustering aspect of Clusty is useful, the privacy policy is straight and clear and the integrated Wikipedia search is a neat feature. And of course Google has become so mainstream that it's not hip to use it anymore.

The only thing is that Clusty isn't something you can easily verb. I often 'google' when I'm really 'clustying'. Or something. Nevermind.

What About Collexis?

[eldavojohn]

I built prototype search software that revolved around a product called Collexis. It has a medical demo you can mess around with. The beautiful thing is that it uses a taxonomy to fingerprint documents. It also takes in raw text and assigns it a fingerprint and then uses Sleepy Cat to quickly reference many records and match your fingerprint. Unfortunately, it's not built for "open" domains like everything on the web but works best when you have a finite domain and a large number of documents to search.

I feel the author fails to even address the first thing he should have in this article. Why move from "Web 1.0" to "Web 2.0"? This article is not intuitively laid out.

I found an article in Nature to be much more informative than the article linked in this story.

Niche search

[blinder]

while these are clever ideas, and do indeed provide a slightly different spin on the traditional search engine, I believe that they will not have much hope of ever taking a bite out of google or yahoo. I mean, I just went through the process of creating a Swicki, and while the interface is nice... it is a lot of work.

I still think that the niche search engines are more viable not so much as alternatives to google or yahoo, but as an almost adjunct. Like the site I volunteer for, Diysearch.com, yeah it will never replace the majors, and it isn't intended to do, but because its subject-matter focused, the search results and relevancy are that much higher than what you'd get from a google or a yahoo.

I have no idea if subject-matter focus is the most viable route in terms of focusing search results, but Diysearch.com has been around for a decade and its doing quite well.

Re:Not so stunning results for the "next generatio

[isleshocky77]

I think Lexxe is feeling the slashDot effect. One big difference between google and itself... I clicked the "Who is Louis Nicholas" comparison links... google came back immediately, Lexxe took two minutes to give me an error of too many people.

Re:no one gives a fuck

[timeOday]

You're missing the whole point. "Web 2.0" does generally refer to Ajax and more interactive user interfaces, but that's not what this guy means by "Search 2.0", namely new and improved relevancy models, user preferences, collaboration, collective intelligence and, a rich user experience. In other words, it's about improving search results. The only one possibly relevant to your complaint is "rich user experience," but even so I don't know how you got "ads" from that. Really, you're complaining about the tail end of the first generation of search, which devolved into "portals" full of irrelevant results, ads, and other unwanted links.

I suppose if anything, your post and the subseqent moderation show one thing: when you try to jump on a naming buzzword like "Web 2.0," it tends to bring along some baggage.

Re:I say!

[Anonymous Coward]

Too late. http://www.pornotube.com/