Need A Better Search Engine?
After finally finishing my last midterm, I decided to focus on some non-academic related reading. And, I also wanted to catch up on some of Seth Godin’s blog posts. In reviewing some of his older work, I was delighted to come across his blog on information density. In the blog, Seth discusses how some of us prefer to have more information than others when it comes to search results.
In one of my previous blogs, I mentioned how search engines today return search results based on what the search engine “thinks” you want to see instead of what you need to see (you can read it here). In Seth’s blog, he mentions one website that I found absolutely fascinating and that goes against the grain of most search engines today – DuckDuckGo.
DuckDuckGo works as a search engine that aims to tackle the powerful criticism and potential problems of information density that are being attached to many of the current leading search engines. In addition, DuckDuckGo is also focusing on being a search engine that manages the privacy side of data mining quite differently as well.
If this is the first time you hear of it, then check it out! If you already know of it, then this maybe is a good reminder for you to revisit it if your engagement with it had ended. Furthermore, if you use it on a regular basis, then please leave a comment and tell us about your experience, In fact, whether you use it regularly or are about to use it for the first time, I would love to know what you think of it.
What makes a search engine website like this so unique is that it emphasizes the sources of the link with favicons on the left thereby giving us more results on one page while trusting us to be the discerning users that we are :). The DuckDuckGo format also brings more editorial matches than Bing or Google. Take a look below:
What is also interesting about DuckDuckGo is that it provides very convenient keyboard shortcuts. For example, if you want to find a map of Ottawa, all you have to do is enter “!m Ottawa” and voila! You will instantly be directed to Google maps. You can check Ottawa news by entering “!n Ottawa” and so on. I suggest you play with this website because it is definitely fun to use for computer nerds and it attempts to solve the problem of the filter bubbles.
What DuckDuckGo is trying to do is similar to Gnowit by providing results untainted by search engine internal rules while it focuses on getting the information that users really need. Though Gnowit is not an Internet search engine, we are focusing on making media monitoring elegant and intelligent. Gnowit is trying to show you the bigger picture as opposed to narrow viewpoints that miss the information you really need. We summarize information and provide media search results that are intelligent and useful. We get you what you need, based on what you want, not what we think you need to see…
All this goes to show that there is still room for innovation in search with Gnowit and others blazing the way.