Filed under: Internet, Utilities, Microsoft, Mozilla, Search
Don't let search results fall off of the cliff - Climb the Surf Canyon
When we saw Surf Canyon, we figured it was just another search add-on. It was obvious after installing it and searching around on Google for about 3 minutes that we were wrong.Here's why.
Surf Canyon wants to bring those meaty good search results to the forefront. You know, the ones that we never see on page 2,3,4,100 on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. Do you ever search past the first 2 pages? We don't.
That's where Surf Canyon differentiates itself. It has developed search technology that recommends posts to you based on the content of the top search results on each of the search engines.
It sticks a bull's eye next to the results and when you click it, you'll see results that are recommended. Not only that, it'll tell you the search result page it was found on. See this example here:
A simple Google search on "Downloadsquad" brings back your regular run of the mill result. But if you click the bull's eye next to it, you'll see 3 recommended results (which you can change in preferences to see more). One of the results that they recommend is a darn good one and they dug it way out of page 3!
Who would have gotten to page 3? Nobody.
Nobody but Surf Canyon. This is one to watch. Go grab the 19k download for Firefox OR Internet Explorer and tell us if it helps your search experience at all.
When Mozilla recommends an extension for Firefox, you take notice. Well, we do at least.
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So, just how good at time waster games are you? Think you've got the stuff? Well, The World's Hardest Game 2.0 doesn't think you do.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
minibar said 1:33PM on 6-04-2008
The concept seems mostly to be a usability improvement script for "Find more results like this" which is nice, however I'd prefer the page changing revision selectable in options and the reason I decided against was the privacy policy.
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Mark Cramer said 6:38PM on 6-05-2008
Thank you, Drew, for the post and the kind words! We'll be sure to keep you posted on our progress.
And thank you, minibar, for the feedback.
http://blog.surfcanyon.com/2007/09/28/recommendations-are-not-similar-pages/ describes how our technology differs from, and in fact has nothing to do with, "Similar Pages".
In the Preferences menu users can select whether or not they wants the bull's eyes to appear and under what conditions they would like to the recommendations to appear, or not.
Our Privacy Policy can be found here: http://www.surfcanyon.com/search/privacy.jsp.
We welcome all feedback. Thanks to everyone who's given the application a try!
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Drew Olanoff said 8:38AM on 6-06-2008
We're looking forward to hearing more!