Tired of wading through thousands -- possibly millions -- of results to your Web searches? How would it be if search engines offered lists of category tabs -- so you could confine your search to relevant Web sites? Too restrictive, too cumbersome (after all, how many categories would there need to be)? Well then, how about invisible tabs -- behind-the-scenes functions that would automatically categorize your query and deliver results within that category? AskJeeves and others already do it to a degree. Example: Test AskJeeves against Google for "pictures of DNA." AskJeeves delivers images; Google offers a list of URLs. "It's not rocket science to see your query and decide that it makes sense to push the invisible image tab for you. But the change it produces, and perceived relevance to me, is dramatic," says SearchEngineWatch.com editor Danny Sullivan. To avoid frustrating searchers by, say, returning shopping lists instead product reviews, the search engine might come back with questions formatted as listings: "What would you like to do? Show me prices for this product from merchants across the Web; Show me product reviews from across the Web; Show me general matching content from across the Web."
posted by Marcus Zillman |
9:29 AM
