Has the A9 search engine been useful for you?
Tue, Oct 19 2004
A couple of weeks ago I mentioned A9 (www.a9.com) which has just been launched by Amazon. As I explained previously A9 acts as a "front" to multiple data sources, allowing you to enter your search terms in one location and then get back results from a variety of search types including web pages, image search, dictionary references, etc. At the time I said I'd try using it as my default search engine for a while and report back to you.
Well, I've tried. After years of habitually using Google (to the extent that I even customised my browser to run a Google search when I type in keywords instead of a website address) I tried using A9 as my new "default" search engine.
My results were mixed.
When I want to do a slightly "non-standard" search, like looking up the definition of a word, A9 rocks. In one place I can get a definition of the word, web pages that it appears in, and images associated with it. But I've found that the visual clutter of the A9 interface gets in my way, at least mentally, when I just want a simple list of websites matching a specific list of keywords. For me, at least, one of the most powerful things about Google is the simplicity of its interface: there's a search box, you type stuff in, and it finds it. As any of the staff here at IVT will tell you, I'm always going on about unified search within websites and intranets: I want a search box where I can type in the name of a client and get back their phone number, or a product name and get back it's description, or a keyword and get back matching knowledgebase articles. It would be even better if I could ask where the car keys are, and have the system tell me I left them in my jacket pocket! I really hate having to go to different places to do different kinds of search.
That's one of the reasons we developed the unified-search architecture within SiteBuilder2, our website / intranet / extranet framework. I didn't like the idea of having to go to the "products" section of a site to search for products, or the "knowledge" section of a site to search for knowledgebase articles, or a "contacts" section to search for customers and suppliers. As a result we created a standard way of searching through content in all SiteBuilder2 modules, so that a "site search" box could be exactly that: a place to put in key words and have it return a unified list of every type of result possible within the system.
So you'd think that A9 would be exactly what I need, and at first I did too. But I've found the segmented results to be annoying rather than helpful. I don't like the visual clutter and the mental exercise of examining multiple sets of results displayed on the same page (yes, I'm lazy that way!). A9 has reinforced to me that personally I like my search results delivered within a unified result set.
Do you agree? Disagree? What are your personal search habits? When you search within a website or intranet, do you want to have one place you can search *everything* or do you prefer section-specific search? Drop IVT a line and let us know!