The genesis of search 2.0

Traditional search engines are based on information retrieval technologies. They use a combination of boolean queries, link popularity, and text relevance amongst many other factors. Each one of the traditional search engines like Yahoo, MSN, Ask jeeves and Google use their own proprietary algorithms to rank search listings.

Search 2.0 isn’t just a new fangled term coined to brand newer search engines. It refers to engines such as Wink and Clusty, which in reality are third generation search engines. Just to explain the term third generation search engines in more detail:

• First generation search engines included Altavista that used page content as the basis for search rankings


• Second generation engines included Google that used page content as one of the many factors to rank a website, along with link analysis and quality of content. besides ofcourse their own proprietary algorithms


• Third generation search engines include Rollyo, Clusty, Wink, and Lexxe, amongst others that are designed to combine the scalability of existing internet search engines with new and improved relevancy models and they bring into the equation user preferences, collaboration, collective intelligence, and a rich UIX, to help information work for you

A peek into the world of search 2.0

Let’s walk through some of the search engines, making loud noises as the forbearers of new fangled search.

Swicki

In short, swicki advocates community search. The results are apparently uniquely tailored and tagged to your community and the information produced is apparently more usable that information retrieved otherwise. All of which makes me wonder what I will do if I don’t belong to a community of web searchers, so to speak. Jokes apart, the swicki community is growing rapidly, and is projected to grow to about 1 million users by the end of the year 2006.

Swickis allow you to build specific searches tailored to your interests and that of your community and get constantly updated results from your web or blog page. Swickis scan all the data indexed in Yahoo Search, plus all additional sources you specify, and present the results in a dynamically updated, easy to use format that you can publish on your site - or use at swicki.com

Clusty

Clusty is a metasearch engine: it queries multiple search engines and combines the results to be displayed and clustered on one screen. Clusty retrieves results from Ask, Open Directory, Gigablast and others

Profiled above are 2 of the proponents of search 2.0. There are a few more, but we’ll walk through what they are doing in another article.

Author - Vishal Sampat

Convonix Inc is a search engine optimization firm that offers customized SEO optimization and PPC campaign management solutions. We manage hundreds of SEO and PPC campaigns. Our clients include Web design firms, adveritising agencies, fortune 500 companies and SMEs. Other internet marketing companies can also Outsource SEO to us in India.

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