Wednesday, May 10, 2006
Livesearch from AllTheWeb
We havn't heard much from AllTheWeb recently, (now part of the Yahoo stable), but today they released a new search interface they call livesearch.
This takes the Google Suggest technique of suggesting words as you type in the search box, and goes one step further by actually doing the suggested search for you to the right of the screen, automatically. This is obviously a resource intensive operation which leads to lots of unnecessary searches being done, so you can see why Yahoo are trying the experiment on an almost forgotten engine, rather than on their main search properties.
The words (or phrases) that come up after typing just one letter are an interesting mix, and it's informative to compare them to the words that Google Suggest uses for the same letter. Some letters agree, but others are widely different.
And what better way to illustrate the chosen result other than by comparing them via another of today's other search engine launches, Google Trends?
In all cases the livesearch result is given first:
a) american idol vs amazon
b) bank of america vs bbc
c) craigslist vs currency convertor
d) both agree on dictionary
e) both agree on ebay
f) facebook vs firefox
g) google vs gmail
h) both agree on hotmail
i) internet explorer vs ikea
j) jessica alba vs jokes
k) kelley blue book vs kelly blue book
l) both agree on lyrics
m) myspace vs mapquest
n) natalee holloway vs news
o) both agree on orbitz
p) photobucket vs paris hilton
q) qvc vs quotes
r) runescape vs ryanair
s) southwest airlines vs spybot
t) both agree on target
u) unique baby names vs ups
v) verizon vs valentines day
w) both agree on weather
x) xanga vs xbox
y) both agree on yahoo
z) both agree on zip codes
I think the K choice is particularly interesting, where they both suggest the same thing, but Google plumps for the much more popular incorrect spelling!
This takes the Google Suggest technique of suggesting words as you type in the search box, and goes one step further by actually doing the suggested search for you to the right of the screen, automatically. This is obviously a resource intensive operation which leads to lots of unnecessary searches being done, so you can see why Yahoo are trying the experiment on an almost forgotten engine, rather than on their main search properties.
The words (or phrases) that come up after typing just one letter are an interesting mix, and it's informative to compare them to the words that Google Suggest uses for the same letter. Some letters agree, but others are widely different.
And what better way to illustrate the chosen result other than by comparing them via another of today's other search engine launches, Google Trends?
In all cases the livesearch result is given first:
a) american idol vs amazon
b) bank of america vs bbc
c) craigslist vs currency convertor
d) both agree on dictionary
e) both agree on ebay
f) facebook vs firefox
g) google vs gmail
h) both agree on hotmail
i) internet explorer vs ikea
j) jessica alba vs jokes
k) kelley blue book vs kelly blue book
l) both agree on lyrics
m) myspace vs mapquest
n) natalee holloway vs news
o) both agree on orbitz
p) photobucket vs paris hilton
q) qvc vs quotes
r) runescape vs ryanair
s) southwest airlines vs spybot
t) both agree on target
u) unique baby names vs ups
v) verizon vs valentines day
w) both agree on weather
x) xanga vs xbox
y) both agree on yahoo
z) both agree on zip codes
I think the K choice is particularly interesting, where they both suggest the same thing, but Google plumps for the much more popular incorrect spelling!
Google Trends
Released today in Google Labs, Google Trends allows you to get graphs of search and news volume over time for keywords you provide. (Its thus a great complement to the Google zeitgeist, which shows whats hot over a short period of time).
If you provide multiple keywords, separated by commas, then the graphs are overlayed, so you can compare them. The graphs also have little lettered marker flags, which correspond to particular news stories, so you can sometimes see the reason for a particular peak in the searching. The graphs carry no scale, so you can't see absolute numbers, just trends over time, or in comparison to another keyword.
There are a few interesting examples provided
If you provide multiple keywords, separated by commas, then the graphs are overlayed, so you can compare them. The graphs also have little lettered marker flags, which correspond to particular news stories, so you can sometimes see the reason for a particular peak in the searching. The graphs carry no scale, so you can't see absolute numbers, just trends over time, or in comparison to another keyword.
There are a few interesting examples provided
- Yankees v Red Sox - with a big peak when they were head to head in the World Series (and the winners search volume was twice the loosers)
- major US holidays, peaking as you might expect
- da vinci with a huge peak last year (when Leonardo's birthday was a featured Google doodle), and recently increasing news volume obviously due to the film of The Da Vinci Code.
- olympics with expected peaks for the Greek summer games, the announcement of the 2012 hosts (London), and the winter games
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