SearchCloud, a new search engine that launched on July 17, has a new take on search refinement that it hopes will make it a useful alternative to the likes of Yahoo and Google. Instead of simply entering multiple keywords, users can rank how important each term is to the search. Each term is placed in a “search cloud”, where its weight is indicated by the size of the font.
For example, you could enter the words “TechCrunch” and “Apple” with TechCrunch more strongly weighted to (hopefully) get articles about Apple on our site. To further refine the search, you could enter terms like “iphone” and “app store” with a lesser weighting, which would help stories on those topics rise to the top, without excluding stories that don’t mention them.
It’s a great concept, but unfortunately SearchCloud’s execution is poor. Using the above example, not one search result on the front page came from TechCrunch. You also can’t adjust the weight of each term directly from the results page – you need to create a new search if you want to adjust the importance of a term.
SearchCloud is relying on Yahoo’s search results, but it’s unclear if and they’re using the new BOSS platform (which lets them reorder search results) instead of the normal API (which doesn’t) – an important differences that separates useful search engines from gimmicky new interfaces. BOSS allows developers to manipulate Yahoo’s search in ways that have previously been impossible, and will likely spawn a number of engines that will truly help today’s search evolve (though most attempts will likely be failures).
SearchCloud has a good idea with weighted keywords – if it can effectively harness BOSS and get some meaningful results then it may be on to something. For the time being though, it’s just a good idea that doesn’t work very well.
I’m surprised this was mentioned during the online buzz of Cuil – which sucks! I don’t really like searchcloud.net and I think the layout is also rather awkward. Cuil vs. Google and Searchcloud.net vs. hmmm.. going blank..
Would you all get over this Cuil vs Google. It is like saying the LA Clippers vs the LA Lakers. It is not even close.
Searchcloud requires an extra step for the search. You have to move the mouse all the way down the page. This makes it slower than Googles to use. In general websites that require less user actions to accomplish a task do better, within reason. It is why user flow is so important.
Plus the eyes tend to the left hand side of a search page, thus it makes little sense to have your search results in the right. It is nice and all that they have a funky logo but the real star is your results not your logo.
Are people creating search engines to try to steal some of the fall out of this Google is taking over the world, I don’t like big companies attitude which always comes when a company gets too big?
Horrible UI. I’d never use it. Also, any search engine worth its money already weighs all these keywords anyway and I doubt you could do many tricks through this UI to actually meaningfully alter the SERPs.
I think that an intersting use of this kind of setting will work great for Alerts (something like filtrbox.com) i.e. passive search.
Quote from their video “your results will be better than google”
If google has an achilles heal, this ain’t it
SearchCloud – Thrive or Fail[VOTE]: http://snurl.com/36uke [www_thriveorfail_com]
why don’t you create a grease monkey script that embeds a thriveorfail widget directly into the post, or a firefox plugin…
on second thought, first make your site not so butt f**ing ugly
Point taken. I know it’s ugly. I suck at design. I’m working on it, I swear. In any event, this story is all tied up – 50/50 thrive/fail.
Find a site you like the design of and copy it.
If SearchCloud results rely on Yahoo, isn’t that kind of like Blackle.com which uses Google? I don’t know I’m just guessing.
http://blabtech.blogspot.com
Hmmm yeah, what searchers have been looking for … more work!
I don’t like the UI either but I can how it is useful while researching on some topic.
I like it based on what few search queries i have done.
Check out http://taggylicio.us – diggs recent media using tags
I have just tried it and it looks good. They still have a bit of work to do I think but its a good start.
You can go ahead and preemptively move this one to the deadpool.
Porn 2.0 sites like http://www.lillyporn.com have incorporated these cloud tags and are dominating search engines. Cloud tag is a wonderful idea. I will be incorporating it on my website as well.
wow, sucks that cuil stole all the pr from these guys. haha, search for “cuil” on cuil http://www.cuil...m/search?q=cuil
Although many users disappointed extremely on it, but searchcloud’s idea is good, I guess.
Actually making each words bolder, bolder takes longer time. It’s true.
And considering that users put the most important word first, it seems such a process is not so valuable.
And interface? it does not look so beautiful, anyway.
But their attempt is really valuable,I say. What they do not use there own unique search engine makes me disappointed, but at least, good trial. I wish their advance and brooming…
The whole web 2.0-a-feature-as-a-startup thing is getting more ridiculous by the day, seems like every other startup merely has 1 differentiation feature, most time that feature can be implemented by their big competitors in short order, and then what?
Yes. May be you are right. But although any one else can imitate original one, idea is still going ahead, then. Anyway, most important thing is what has been invented, not who has done, and that’s why we can not ignore initiator’s trial at all. Some thing is contradicted, is not it.
Sounds like a great idea, let’s see how it plays out.
I can see how putting weight to different words can bring about more accurate results, but a truly good algorithm to match my wants with results will be pretty difficult.
when I am searching something, all i want is to get what i am searching asap and without any hassle. searchcloud looks fancy but thats not what i want.
An interesting service which appears to work quite well, at least from my simple searches. I wouldn’t ever use it but I’m sure someone will.
Secondly, A .net domain – when will they learn
What is really entertaining is that when I seraced “search cloud” or “searchcloud” on google it turned up as hit #5 and #4
if you want to search for apple in techcrunch.com just type the following…
apple site:techcrunch.com
I fail to see how this does anything you can’t already do with google
SearchCloud also makes it harder to search for a long string of text. Type one keyword, weight, second keyword, weight … (re)
The concept is good, although the results I got weren’t that different.
As this article says: “At first, we all Ohh and Ahh… but after five minutes, we return to our Googling” and now that I think about it, they need a name they can conjugate.
“I’ll google it” –> works
“I’ll yahoo it” –> well, maybe
“I’ll live.com it” –> are you kidding?
“I’ll cuil it” –> next!
“I’ll SearchCloud it” –> yeah, right
SearchCloud, very stupid idea, nobody will go through so much trouble when they can just enter the keywords on google and get good results (compared to other engines, its still unbeatable, even the cuil.com, which is just a search engine, google has more services to keep you locked in)
also, very long name, not gonna fly in a thousand years. Sorry for whoever put money or wasted time building this
oh, and on top of it all, they only have the .net domain, please… this is not techcrunch material.
oh, and it triggers popup warnings when you click on results… omg
Well, at least one thing’s for sure…if it does become popular (gaining even a few % of the search market), it’s going to make the owner of SearchCloud.com–if they know what they’re doing–rich.
Building a search engine on a .net? Ugh.
This new thing about SearchCloud is definitely great. However, if Yahoo! and Goggle will tend to imitate it, internet users will still be worse off to use SearchCloud…What a pity…
Why not have user weighted tags (vote tag up or down). Then can utilize a drag and drop plus sliders to have a discovery engine. crowd sourced content definition, with an element of controll. unweighted tags didnt work cause others couldnt remove stupid ones.
Sounds very similar to my continual plea-into-the-ether about how Google should let people vote on search results and take some of the wind out of social media’s sails.
Also, there’s always Spock, which does a similar thing but for people rather than .. stuff!
A complete waste of time, will have no use when semantic web becomes massive.
Anyone else find it amusing that their “how-to” video is hosted on youtube? You’d think they’d invest in hosting their own video rather than using the service of their main competitor…just a thought.
For me just another way of searching. But in the end everybody uses Google