[OPLIN 4cast] OPLIN 4Cast #206: Recent search engine developments

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OPLIN 4Cast

OPLIN 4Cast #206: Recent search engine developments
December 1st, 2010

magnifying glass 
<http://www.oplin.org/4cast/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/mag_glass.gif>Information 
retrieval is basic to librarianship, of course, so now and 
then the /OPLIN 4cast/ highlights recent developments in 
online information searching. Lately there have been several 
interesting developments in search engines. One that most 
people have heard about (and used) is the release of Google 
Instant 
<http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/search-now-faster-than-speed-of-type.html> 
about three months ago, but more recently there have been 
several other announcements.

    * Google Instant, meet Yahoo Instant
      <http://searchengineland.com/google-yahoo-instant-rich-search-assist-56327>
      (Search Engine Land/Danny Sullivan) "It's worth
      clarifying that Yahoo Rich Search Assist is like
      Google Instant but NOT like the recently launched
      Google Instant Previews.... To recap:
          o Google Instant: Launched in September, shows
            previews of results as you type
          o Google Instant Previews: Launched in November,
            shows previews of pages listed in results, if
            you deliberately chose to see them
          o Yahoo Rich Search Assist: Now being tested,
            shows previews of results as you type"
    * Ask.com to return to old service
      <http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/10/technology/internet/10ask.html>
      (New York Times/Verne G. Kopytoff) "Mr. Leeds said
      that Ask.com would continue to offer search on its
      site, but it would no longer compile an index of the
      entire Web. Instead, his company will license an index
      from another company, which he declined to name.
      Ask.com, founded in 1996 as AskJeeves, was a
      question-and-answer search engine early on, but the
      quality of its responses was uneven. After Google
      showed how profitable providing algorithmic search
      results could be, Ask.com followed."
    * New search engine Blekko invites you to slash the Web
      <http://newsbreaks.infotoday.com/NewsBreaks/New-Search-Engine-Blekko-Invites-You-to-Slash-the-Web-71353.asp>
      (Information Today/Marydee Ojala) "You can merely
      enter search terms into Blekko's search box, but that
      doesn't reveal the full power of Blekko as a search
      engine. Instead, couple your search terms with what
      Blekko calls 'slashtags'---predetermined filters that
      limit your search to a particular set of websites.
      These can be those created by Blekko or
      user-generated. They can be topic specific, convey an
      opinion, eliminate spam, act as sorting mechanisms, or
      directly search another site."
    * How to use Blekko to rock at your job
      <http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/how_to_use_blekko_to_rock_at_your_job.php>
      (ReadWriteWeb/Marshall Kirkpatrick) "Blekko, simply
      put, is a social Custom Search Engine creation service
      with RSS feeds. It lets users curate and subscribe to
      mini-search engines that return results only from
      selected websites, thus increasing the signal to noise
      ratio and tightly controlling the context of search
      results. If you've used Google Custom Search, really
      used it, that very powerful tool has been improved
      upon in Blekko because the latter was built to search
      large groups of sites and to have those groups shared
      and edited."

*/Blekko Fact:/*

Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta was 15 years old in 1982 when he 
wrote "Elk Cloner," a virus that infected Apple II machines 
and is one of the first known microcomputer viruses, during 
his Christmas break from high school.
------------------------------------------------------------
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