Search 2.0?

The latest area to fall under the spell of the “deuce dot duck’s-egg” description is that of web searching. An article by Ebrahim Ezzy entitled “Search 2.0 vs Traditional Search” (on Richard MacManus’s blog, Read/WriteWeb — that being his preferred term for what’s happening) identifies three generations of search tools:

To explain the generations:

• First-generation search ranked sites based on page content – examples are early yahoo.com and Alta Vista.
• Second-generation relies on link analysis for ranking – so they take the structure of the Web into account. Examples are Google and Overture.
• Third-generation search technologies are designed to combine 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 that make information more productive.

He then examines five search engines that he thinks belong in the 3rd generation: Swicki, Rollyo, Clusty , Wink and Lexxe. I’m aware of Clusty and Rollyo, but I haven’t yet taken a look at the others.

The claim is that Swicki can learn, in which case it might be interesting. Clusty’s categorization can be helpful, though often enough misses the mark that I find myself not using it. And I thought some time ago that Slaw should tackle Rollyo to produce a series of custom search engines pointed at sites we like as sources of Canadian law.

It takes chutzpah to challenge Google and Yahoo — or maybe just the fond hope that if you come up with a nifty hook you’ll be raptured up by one of these giants. But it’s also clear that searching is where it’s at in this world of billions of sites; and there’s a whole lot to be said for letting the this community and that hone or teach a search engine so that good results come up faster and clearer. It works for Wikipedia, where text has to be created and edited, so it ought to work where all that’s wanted is a tag, or a thumbs-up or a pattern of choices.