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dzp111 · Jan 27, 2009, 08:52 PM

In Beta form.

Melzoo.com

Future of search engines?

turtle777 · Jan 27, 2009, 09:24 PM

No.

-t

Rumor · Jan 27, 2009, 09:28 PM

Doubt it. It would take a hell of a lot to uproot Google.

besson3c · Jan 27, 2009, 09:55 PM

I don't see the point. By the time it loads the preview in its preview pane I could just open the site (and many more) in new tabs

dzp111 · Jan 27, 2009, 10:03 PM

What about the concept though. (and remember it's only Beta).

I'm not liking it that much myself -surely won't replace my Google any time soon. But there's an easiness/attractiveness to it, I find. No clicking to view pages. (getting lazy I guess).

: )

besson3c · Jan 27, 2009, 10:08 PM

The concept is somewhat interesting, but I think it will have to offer most people more than this one feature. There needs to be a compelling reason to get people to switch from what works well and has become a part of our culture (even turned into a verb), I just don't think that this alone is enough.

This, of course, is not even taking into account the accuracy of its search results.

zro · Jan 27, 2009, 11:55 PM

Oh my god that was awful. Someone remind me to never go to that site again.

dzp111 · Jan 28, 2009, 12:01 AM

Originally Posted by zro

Oh my god that was awful. Someone remind me to never go to that site again.

Can you exaggerate a bit more? Please?

: )

dzp111 · Jan 28, 2009, 12:07 AM

Okay, I'll say it. It's where Google will or at least should go. Mouse-over hits.

Preferences are on the way.

besson3c · Jan 28, 2009, 12:42 AM

Originally Posted by dzp111

Okay, I'll say it. It's where Google will or at least should go. Mouse-over hits.

Preferences are on the way.

Ahh, I'm just noticing now that the previews don't require clicks. This was definitely not clear to me, and the design I think is simply not workable for Google. For starters, I can't see it scaling - too many AJAX requests on their proxy server. Second, the previews take too long to be generated. One way they can fix this is to start caching the previews on page load and simply toggling a CSS display value, but then this requires more bandwidth for all of this.

Google doesn't have all of these bells and whistles because it is designed to be a very tightly optimized system designed to scale to populations of users that I think it's safe to assume that this search engine is nowhere near approaching right now.

Chuckit · Jan 28, 2009, 04:48 AM

Oh, come on. There are sites dedicated to steaming video with dynamic lists and flash widgets all over the place and you're convinced that some AJAX previews would bring down Google?

Google is already crawling these sites and running sophisticated indexing and matching algorithms on them — not to mention serving YouTube. Shoving a couple more bits down the pipeline to improve their search results won't cause Google to implode, especially if it gives them another place to show ads.

besson3c · Jan 28, 2009, 11:49 AM

I'm not saying that they couldn't do it, what I should have said was that it would require more hardware - it would. They may have that extra horsepower already if their infrastructure is over-engineered enough, but the more important consideration is if it is worth the additional expense? If they can get more ads out of it, sure, but I can't see them wanting to take on something for nothing.

- - e r i k - - · Jan 28, 2009, 08:17 PM

It's clever, I'll give them that. If the presentation were a bit better then maybe…

Railroader · Jan 28, 2009, 09:12 PM

Worst. Search site. Evar.

richwig83 · Jan 28, 2009, 09:23 PM

Is search function is nowhere near as good as Google.... and what is with the split screen?

EndlessMac · Jan 28, 2009, 10:07 PM

I really don't need my search engines to be fancy. I just need it to be accurate. Even with Google, trying to find exactly what I'm looking for takes longer than I really want. The preview feature is nice but not really need because I would have to go to the website anyway to find out if it really is what I'm looking for.

What would be great is if the search engine or some other source would write the descriptions themselves about a website instead of relying on the website's metadata or in line content. Of course that would take a lot of work since there are so many websites out there. Too many websites now know how to make themselves appear on the top of Google search listings. These abuses ruin the effectiveness of search engines.

I also agree that it would take a lot to knock Google off the top choice. The only way I would switch is if a new search engine can be more accurate than Google.

Chuckit · Jan 28, 2009, 10:44 PM

Originally Posted by besson3c

I'm not saying that they couldn't do it, what I should have said was that it would require more hardware - it would. They may have that extra horsepower already if their infrastructure is over-engineered enough, but the more important consideration is if it is worth the additional expense? If they can get more ads out of it, sure, but I can't see them wanting to take on something for nothing.

Google is the king of doing something just because it's cool and then going, "Wait, how do we make money off that?"

besson3c · Jan 28, 2009, 10:48 PM

Chuckit: that's true, good point.

gradient · Jan 29, 2009, 02:47 AM

I like the potential of this concept. Far from perfect, but I can see, depending on the type of information you were looking for, that it could speed things up considerably once the interface matures.

calverson · Jan 29, 2009, 05:01 AM

If it really works, expect to see a "Powered By Google™" logo somewhere in there soon.

Maflynn · Jan 29, 2009, 09:39 AM

What's the name of that search engine that was released with so much fan fair last year by some ex-google execs and which promptly failed in its launch. I'm trying to remember the name and see if that's still around.

This new search engine should take some lessons learned from that failed launch but the fact remains the market is already saturated with search engines as it is, and new one isn't going to far.

Jawbone54 · Jan 29, 2009, 01:40 PM

No. Too clunky.

It takes up a ton of screen real estate too.

Also, this might be a smaller issue for some, but not for me: it's more difficult to type. Typing in the "google.com" URL is extremely easy for me. I don't know if this was intentional from the beginning, but the fingers just easily flick to the keys. Melzoo isn't that way, and I don't believe it's because I've typed Google so many times.

[EDIT] This is even worse than Cuil.

Maflynn · Jan 29, 2009, 01:44 PM

Originally Posted by Jawbone54

[EDIT] This is even worse than Cuil.

Aah that's what I was looking for

Jawbone54 · Jan 29, 2009, 03:40 PM

Originally Posted by Maflynn

Aah that's what I was looking for

I do a vanity search on Cuil and it pops up a ton of totally unrelated sites.

I do a vanity search on Google, and it pulls up my blog, my photo blog, my flickr, my business site, and plenty of other related items.

SSharon · Jan 29, 2009, 10:16 PM

Originally Posted by EndlessMac

I really don't need my search engines to be fancy. I just need it to be accurate. Even with Google, trying to find exactly what I'm looking for takes longer than I really want. The preview feature is nice but not really need because I would have to go to the website anyway to find out if it really is what I'm looking for.

What would be great is if the search engine or some other source would write the descriptions themselves about a website instead of relying on the website's metadata or in line content. Of course that would take a lot of work since there are so many websites out there. Too many websites now know how to make themselves appear on the top of Google search listings. These abuses ruin the effectiveness of search engines.

I also agree that it would take a lot to knock Google off the top choice. The only way I would switch is if a new search engine can be more accurate than Google.

Have you tried out Mahalo.com ? The results for that search engine are done by humans.

As for melzoo, I don't think it is all that bad. It won't displace google, but who says it needs to. I found the previews to load very quickly on my computer and could see it being a decent search engine with some minor tweaks and of course accurate search results.

dzp111 · Jan 29, 2009, 10:26 PM

I go to Melzoo.

I type 'putrid' and scroll down the defs. (no clicks)

I go back and type '1967 Mustang', and see images to the right. And no click(s) needed. Just scrolling.

I'm not suggesting that this would replace Google. But I am pondering on its merits.

: )

zro · Jan 29, 2009, 11:15 PM

Selection on mouseover drives me batty. Seriously, I find it wholly aggravating. That and javascript autotab in forms.

I would think this site had potential if:

a) I had to click a result to view it.
b) I could click inside the result "preview" (e.g., on a link inside the resulting page) without being then taken to see what I was already looking at. It's like, "Surprise! Here's that same page again! So try again!"

- - e r i k - - · Jan 30, 2009, 08:39 AM

Originally Posted by Jawbone54

I do a vanity search on Cuil and it pops up a ton of totally unrelated sites.

My vanity search turned out pretty well, with this as the first hit:

Except for... who the F A R K is that guy?????

Oisín · Jan 30, 2009, 08:52 AM

Didn’t you know, Erik? Cuil is so advanced it’s actually far ahead of its time. That there is a picture of you in 20 years.

Edit: Also, a vanity search on Cuil gives me exactly three results, one of which is intriguingly named ‘Straight boy’ …

besson3c · Jan 30, 2009, 09:37 AM

That looks like Erik to me.

Jawbone54 · Jan 30, 2009, 12:23 PM

Originally Posted by - - e r i k - -

Finally I get to see the real photographer responsible for all those great koala pics!

Sealobo · Jan 30, 2009, 06:41 PM

it's a mess.

egfx · Jan 30, 2009, 09:48 PM

Well... I think it's more user friendly then Searchme.com but comon, google killer?? You gotta be kidding me. It's going to take more then a preview trick.

Here is my feedback, don't hijack by back button with your Ajax. Every page I previewed got stored in my back button history and I had to click it a hundred times to get back to the page I was on. Not cool.

dzp111 · Jan 30, 2009, 09:57 PM

Well, I didn't ask if the site was Jesus, Allah, or Google. Only if it had potential. And not on its own, but in general, in the sense of how we search for things.

: )

TETENAL · Jan 30, 2009, 10:44 PM

http://www.exalead.com/search

Chuckit · Jan 31, 2009, 04:30 AM

Here's what confuses me about this search engine's gimmick: How is a live preview useful if it isn't somehow a quick cached representation of the result site? As it is, it seems like it would be about as quick just to open all the Google links in tabs and flip through those.

gradient · Jan 31, 2009, 03:14 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

Here's what confuses me about this search engine's gimmick: How is a live preview useful if it isn't somehow a quick cached representation of the result site? As it is, it seems like it would be about as quick just to open all the Google links in tabs and flip through those.

You're right, it's not a lot faster then opening Google results in tabs, but the potential lies in what someone said above: After typing in my search query, all I have to do is scroll down the results list, pausing over the results I want to take a look at. If I don't want to open a particular result that I've previews, I just keep scrolling down the list. Not a single keystroke required. The only mouse click(s) required until I find the exact result I'm looking for are to click to the next page of search results.

Chuckit · Jan 31, 2009, 06:00 PM

Originally Posted by gradient

You're right, it's not a lot faster then opening Google results in tabs, but the potential lies in what someone said above: After typing in my search query, all I have to do is scroll down the results list, pausing over the results I want to take a look at. If I don't want to open a particular result that I've previews, I just keep scrolling down the list. Not a single keystroke required. The only mouse click(s) required until I find the exact result I'm looking for are to click to the next page of search results.

But why is that better? If it doesn't save you any time, what's the point? Is clicking your scroll wheel that much more effort than pausing over the link while waiting for the page to load?

gradient · Jan 31, 2009, 11:32 PM

I'm not saying that it's necessarily "better", as subjective as that is, at this stage but it has the potential to be because it allows for easier interaction with fewer keystrokes while also allowing for more multitasking by the user. I can compare the content of the open preview while simultaneously scanning the other available search results, for example. I'm sure there is much more potential in this idea then exists in this beta site, too.

Incidentally, I do think that just scrolling and pausing is a significantly less effort then opening a new tab(s) and switching between them and the original results.

dzp111 · Jan 31, 2009, 11:45 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

, it seems like it would be about as quick just to open all the Google links in tabs and flip through those.

I'll disagree there. Preview is faster than tabbing. But of course, how fast is your computer..?

Eh?

: )

Chuckit · Feb 1, 2009, 04:13 AM

I use a variety of Macs ranging from a 1.5 GHz G4 to a 2.6 GHz Core 2 Duo, and none of them take a large amount of time just to open a tab — loading the page takes time, that seems to be exactly the same as the preview.