Site-specific search provider Eurekster is today releasing a new version of its Swicki product that features a set community features on its results and home pages.
The free Swicki search widget, used here on TechCrunch in the right-hand column, provides a cloud of popular search terms and leads to a page with results voted on by users and optionally collected from related sites.
The new version attempts to bring even more attention to the site-specific Swicki community built around search. The following components will now show up on the results page: a summary of the most recent comments (users can comment on search results) and a list of the top Swicki comment contributors. On the Swicki homepage for a site (each site that adds the search functionality also gets a community overview homepage), you will now be able to see the top voted search results, a list of the most recent posts, and related RSS feeds.
I’ve never been a huge fan of the Swicki search we have here on TechCrunch, since I prefer to see just a reverse chronological list of the posts related to my search term, not a list weighted by user votes. If you search “facebook”, for example, the first result comes from March 2006 and not terribly relevant anymore.
However, I can understand why community-based search is useful for less newsy sites, such as the home repair example that Eurekster has provided us to the left. For standing resources such as this one, the feedback of the community can be particularly helpful for refining search results, pushing the best to the top. Today’s improvements should help to strengthen that community and encourage participation.
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This company will struggle to survive.
I prefer the regular wordpress search over all of that Swicki stuff, call me crazy
It’s just yet another alternative way of searching that may or may not go mainstream one day
Really good
http://www.yooflix.com
I am eager to see how does it fare in its struggling period.
cant stand this. i feel this site should have a good search function. Why not just switch to google?
Why use google when search within wordpress is better? The only reason you should use google to site search(in my opinion) is to earn some extra money from google ads.
What I like about the TechCrunch swicki is that, for example, if I search for ‘facebook’ I get a list of interesting commentary and analysis on Facebook. When I do this search on Google, I only get results for the site itself, the Facebook blog, and other corporate info.
anyone know why Eurekster took such a huge traffic hit?
http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....ekster.com
Charts similar in compete and quantcast.