What’s the difference between these mobile services? What special services do they offer; what limitations do they have? Here are brief reviews of the 8 most major services currently in the market (in no particular order):

1. Google Mobile

   Well, of course Google has an entry in the mobile search market. Google’s mobile search rewrites your page in order to, ideally, best display it on your device. Of course, this system has a few flaws: rewriting the XHTML doesn’t necessarily result in a usable site. On at least one example, the page actually failed to render at all…

   What else does Google currently provide?

   • XHTML Mobile Search or WML Mobile Search (Restricted index)
   • Mobile Google Maps
   • Mobile Google News
   • Gmail for Mobile (No separate URL)
   • Local Search
   • Google SMS

   Google has the major advantage that they have dozens of services which they can convert into mobile-friendly formats.

2. 4Info Mobile Search

   4Info is a mobile specific search engine. Of course, their search is usable from their website, but it’s not a significant target market. A much more limited search index than Google’s, searches are focused on information immediacy rather than the entire web: default searches are likely to turn up stock information, news headlines, sports scores, yellow pages information, or other similarly immediate need information.

   This seems on first blush like an advantage: but not necessarily. If you’re searching for information not available in their index, you simply get irrelevant information (based on word similarity.) Services from the major search engines are designed to return the types of data that 4Info returns, but also have the possibility of returning other websites. Still, 4Info’s limited scope helps ensure that a query will only return certain types of data. And a full web search is possible by visiting their main site, as well.

   Other services from 4Info:

   • SMS text messaging information: text messages addressed to 44636 (4INFO).
   • Text alerts: define events which should automatically trigger SMS messages. Sports scores, stock quotes, weather – sent to your phone based on specific criteria you’ve set.
   • 4INFO Mobile application: provides access to channeled content and saved searches.
3. Ask Mobile

   Ask uses a service called Skweezer to process web pages searched on their mobile site. Unfortunately, at the time I’m writing this Skweezer seems unable to "skweeze" anything. The service provides searches through Ask.com, Google, Yahoo, MSN, and Looksmart, compressing and reformatting their pages for optimal display in handheld devices. So, a service not dissimilar to Google’s compression methods: except with the added benefit that you can go to Skweezer.net and set your own preferences. (And the detriment that it’s not apparently working for me…)

   Regardless, Ask has a nice straightforward mobile interface offering a number of services:

   • Driving or Walking directions
   • Image search
   • Business Listings
   • Mapping Service
   • Weather
   • Bloglines blog search
   • Area codes (wondering where that phone call came from?)
   • Currency Conversion
   • Horoscope
   • Time zones
4. Yahoo! Mobile

   Yahoo!’s mobile search directs you to Local, Image, or Web search by default – reasonable offerings. SMS searches are also available, providing much the same kind of data available from other SMS serivces.

   Yahoo! also provides mobile web services including Yahoo! Mail, Messenger, games, and a wide variety of services from their collection of mainstream services. The specific services available, however, vary widely depending on your specific phone: somewhat of a disadvantage.

   Oh…and the information site for Yahoo!’s mobile web offerings is really annoying. Left me cold.

5. MSN (Live) Mobile

   Live Mobile brings us back to the nice and simple interface. Unusual for Microsoft, but welcome. The search provides access to web search, local, mapping, news, and spaces search.

   Additional services include:

   • Windows Live Messenger for mobile (seems pointless to me…)
   • Customized home pages
   • Email access
   • RSS content at Live.com

   Live Mobile wins the award for most confusing services listing…

6. AOL Mobile

   AOL offers Web search, Local search, Shopping, and "Surf the Web" as their search options. Trying out the Surf the Web option (whatever it’s supposed to do) resulted in an internal server error for me, so that’ll remain a mystery.

   In addition to the basic search options which are pretty commonly available, AOL provides:

   • AOL and AIM Mail
   • CityGuide (allows you to set your location and find a variety of services in that area.)
   • MovieFone
   • AOL Feed Reader
   • MapQuest
   • AOL Pictures
   • News/Weather/Sports
   • Entertainment

   Same ideas as everybody else, for the most part – although the incorporation of MovieFone seems like a nice touch.

7. Nokia Mobile Search

   Nokia, of course, is a mobile phone company rather than a search company. As such, their service offerings are a little different from the others. Nokia provides a downloadable application (only for Nokia phones, of course) which provides a search interface for users. Searches are provided by a variety of service providers, depending on your location: in the United States, it’s either Windows Live or Yahoo! – in Canada, you’ll also get searches from Yellowpages.ca.

   Nokia’s search software gives you the choice of Web, Local, or Image search to begin your search process. In local search, you can have the immediate choice to call a found service immediately, add their number to your contacts list, or map the location – a handy way of taking advantage of their service integration. In addition, the local search automatically detects your location, providing local results wherever you happen to be.

8. Technorati Mobile

   Well, Technorati Mobile search doesn’t really have any extra features: Technorati searches blogs, and that’s exactly what their mobile search does. If all you want is to search Technorati’s blog index, come here.

   Unfortunately, Technorati Mobile doesn’t give you the ability to log in to your Technorati account, view your favorites, or any of the other possible benefits you might get from it.

So that’s mobile search in a nutshell. Lots of services, lots of common features, and the odd custom feature. For myself, interface makes a big difference: and the winners (to me) for interface were Ask.com and AOL. (I can’t believe I’m favoring AOL…). Why are these interfaces preferable to me? They’re providing basic lists of their services in very straightforward list form. They don’t segregate their services into different web addresses, inaccessible from each other.

Google was pretty good, as well – but still not quite appealing. 4Info incorporates all of their search tools into a single search box – except for web search, which is located at a different web address, with no link. Live Mobile tries to make you download a .dll file when you visit it…not very appealing.

This book, an excellent guide for the self-motivated search engine optimizer, won me over on page 54. Not that I wasn’t already convinced that Jennifer and Gradiva had a lot to say: but page 54 contained the single statement which demonstrated a perfect understanding of what it takes to understand the search marketing industry.

I wonder why that’s happening.

As they say, this mantra will keep you working through all the intellectual challenges of SEO. It demonstrates that critical characteristic of the successful search marketer: curiousity. They make a concentrated point of telling their reader that their own curiousity, coupled with a bit of experimentation and a strong willingness to learn, will keep their site moving continuously forward.

SEO: An Hour A Day is a great book. It’s honest in recognizing where it can’t help you, by differentiating clearly between "eternal truths" (things you can always count on – like change) and "ephemeral truths" – those facets of search marketing which are constantly in fluctuation.

The authors focus consistently on your business needs. They’re not trying to tell you that you need to do something for the good of the world – they’re telling you that you need to do something to accomplish your specific business goal. That practical and realistic emphasis on business oriented needs makes the book a great reference.

Of course, SEO isn’t just a matter of fixing your site and finding some marketing – and the authors are obviously aware of this. They’ve included chapters on convincing your company – everybody from the graphic designers and IT guys to the 5-martini lunch executives gets their mention. Even better, for the time-pressed small business owner, you’ve got an entire chapter on slacking off. What could be better than knowing exactly what you can go ahead and leave until later?

The book isn’t necessarily going to move somebody into the top ranks of search marketing, of course. No single text is capable of providing the breadth of experience and knowledge contained in 10 years of practical use. But if you want to understand what your professional consultant is doing, or use this book as a kicking off point to learn how to promote your own sites, you’ll have made a great choice.
Personally, I think I’m likely to recommend this book be on the bookshelves of my own clients – they may not ever read it, but one can always hope!

DailyLit is a very simple service which allows individuals to sign up and receive serialized versions of literary classics in their email. (Literary classics in the public domain, at any rate.)

It sounds intriguing – the thought of receiving Dickens in serialized format makes me feel like I’m jumping backwards in time to read Bentley’s Miscellany or some such vehicle for serialized literature.

It seems like creating immediacy in media is the most common use of modern technology – it’s refreshing to see a site which is using technology to stretch an experience out, instead. For myself, it’s easy to sit down and read for hours on end – so I don’t do it frequently. I’d lose myself in a good book and fail to get a tiny bit of work done. DailyLit suggests the possibility of controlling those habits!

Moved and carried that the attorney be instructed to look after the interests of ths city as pertains to the inquest about be held to inquire into the cause of death of Joseph Dolson in the sewer ditch on Laurens street April 28th, 1893.

Yuck! In the sewer ditch? Not too happy about that.

But, my death aside, the whole service is really pretty neat. You can view results in a timeline format, defaulting to sort from oldest to newest. If you’re trying to research, for example, the first mention of a particular technology or first use of a phrase, this could be a fantastic way to delve into the records. If you want to see an overview of a topic and how it was treated differently over time, this is a great resource.

It’s not perfect yet. The biggest hole, which is applicable to any news archive query, is completeness. Although the search is performed across a wide range of historical archives, it’s still missing a lot of information. This is undoubtedly a licensing issue – despite the fact that Google is providing easy access to purchasable content (not giving it away for free; an important distinction), I’m sure many companies see this service as a challenge to their control of information.

That is undoubtedly the reason I didn’t find myself in any recent archives. I know that I appeared in the newspaper in Missoula, Montana, where I grew up, in the 1990′s. No references, however, were in the results to be found. It would appear that my home town paper is not indexed.

This isn’t exactly a surprise. Small Montana papers are hardly one of the first sources Google would be likely to get involved, and, similarly, are a source which it’s unlikely that many of the major newspaper archive indexes they’re searching would have necessarily contracted with. Nonetheless, this leaves a big hole in the archives for small-town history. Local search is left in the lurch, for now.

Of course, your paper might very well be included – there’s no list of sources available, so it’s a bit of a crap shoot.

There are, perhaps, some duplicate content issues to be worked out. The results for this search are a little bit strange. Since these results could well change, I’m providing a screen capture as well so I can point out the fact that the 10 results on this page are all exactly the same.

Thanks to Phillip Lenssen and Barry Schwartz.

Tied to their Video Games vertical is a newly launched search engine, Gazerk. Besides the fact that the domain name demonstrates very clearly how the world seems to be running out of real word domains, this powered-by-Kosmix search engine should be appealing to the video game geek world. The color palette used by Gazerk is awful, by the way – pink text on a black background is definitely not a design with me in mind.

The US Politics vertical, which I hadn’t seen before, is quite useful – Kosmix’ categorization technology gives you the ability to organize the search results according to viewpoint – currently only Liberal, Conservative, or Libertarian, so it’s only a very general breakdown, but the idea may have potential.

Hat tip to Nadir at SEO Principle for noticing the new vertical search engines.

The article also reports that Digg will be increasing their social-networking aspects, adding the ability to pick and share your category preferences with friends or add personalized input to what appears on the pages. Although, from the description, I must admit I’m not really clear what "add their input to what appears on the Web pages" may mean.

This is, of course, rather interesting when you consider that AOL’s recent launch of Netscape.com as a user-rated news source includes a number of these additional options.

It’ll be interesting to see what impact these new options may have on Digg. First of all, the front page itself may change significantly. There’s only so much room on the very first page of a site; and the percentage of tech news is likely to decrease. Despite the fact that Digg’s audience is currently almost exclusively people involved with or interested in the technology industry, this may very quickly expand to include others with interests solely in comical videos or in celebrity news. To me, this would be a serious diminishment in the value and interest I’ve received from Digg.

But, maybe this won’t happen – it’s also quite possible that Digg’s new push will fail to escape from the tech crowd, and the new categories will tend to populated with geek favorites such as Star Trek clips.

My personal feeling is that the expansion into current events and other news categories is great – although it reduces the overall focus of the site, these are interesting and potentially fruitful ways of retrieving information you may not otherwise see. However, I think that the incorporation of video may be a mistake. This detracts from the otherwise (mostly) serious information and articles available on Digg, supplanting it with popular media and pointless video clips. These have their place; but I feel that the inclusion of video is likely to seriously diffuse the newsworthy content available on Digg.

It should come as little surprise that I’m not intending to write about the frozen treat. Despite the fact that it’s looking like a hot, muggy day and I certainly wouldn’t mind one – writing about frozen treats won’t bring them into my hands. The meta-search engine, on the other hand, I can easily take a look at, without needing to travel to New Orleans.

Huckabuck’s Technology Offering

Huckabuck.com is one of the rising crowd of new metasearch engines. They’re big selling point is the use of an equalizer-like search tuner, allowing the user to define their preferred blend of results. Not happy with your search? Perhaps you wanted a pinch more Technorati in the mix. I’ve mentioned before that I think user-customizable search tools are an important new development in search. This is probably one of the more user-friendly examples of this kind of technology I’ve seen.

I’ve reviewed attempts at customizable search before – I was highly critical of MSN’s Search Macros and not incredibly thrilled with the anemic offering from Mojeek. Both great ideas, but neither particularly well implemented. Huckabuck, on the other hand, seems to have a very nice, clean implementation. Unobtrusive when not activated, yet very easy to understand and use when you choose.

The implementation is in AJAX, with all the fancy graphical interactions available to that technology. However, appearance is not what I’m reviewing; I’m interested in results and usability. Here’s the tuner itself:

The use should be pretty clear from the outset. A set of sliders, to disable or adjust the use of these six data sources for the metasearch. Also, above those sliders, arrows to navigate between a variety of presets emphasizing technology (Digg), social search (del.icio.us), research (Google), shopping (MSN), or blog search (Technorati). Each preset places an emphasis on a different engine. Interestingly enough, no present places any emphasis on Yahoo – perhaps Yahoo is lacking in any kind of specialty?

As an aside, this isn’t necessarily a negative – Yahoo may simply provide the best results for a generalist search. Although, with the growing importance of contextual search and vertical search, this is a dubious positive.

Continuing to the right side of the selection panel, we have the ability to change theme (not interested), an autocompletion option (intriguing), a virtual keyboard (curious), and the ability to change the number of results per page (very nice). Some of these are useful, some are window-dressing, but they are all very clearly conveyed – and that’s what matters to me.

I played with the autocomplete feature a little – it’s a lot like Google’s Suggest. A neat time saver for common searches. If you’re looking for something a bit more off the beaten path, it doesn’t have much to offer, of course. The virtual keyboard was also a little intriguing. I’m not sure this is really a worthwhile addition – perhaps, in combination with autocomplete, it could be somewhat handy. However, to me the primary purpose of a virtual keyboard should be as an aide for mobility impaired users. This particular implementation will certainly be usable by that population – as long as they browse with JavaScript activated. The AJAX implementation of the tool does mean that, from an accessibility perspective, it may not be perfect.

In fact, without JavaScript, none of these tools will function at all. Still, there are some advantages to browsing without JavaScript – the advertising won’t function as well.

What about the search results?

Well, there’s not much to say there – Huckabuck isn’t using their own algorithm, so the results are rather at the mercy of the engine they’re drawing data from. However, the customization available using the search tuner gives them an edge – if you don’t like their results, it’s very easy to change. I do wonder, however, whether it might not have been more user friendly to use their presets concepts as their slider categories. As it stands, you adjust the importance of a data source in the results – what if, instead, you adjusted the importance of, for example, commercial data in your search and the interface adjusted MSN’s importance in the background? Many users may not be aware of what engine would be best to adjust for their results – but would probably be more quickly able to identify what type of data they were more interested in. Huckabuck’s slider presets provide this data, but the sliders themselves are a more obvious tool than the selector for the presets.

Other thoughts about Huckabuck

I like the fact that the owners of Huckabuck, Chris Schultz and Blake Killian, are deeply involved with the New Orleans community. They are sponsors of BrainJams New Orleans, which is doing a lot of work to help rebuild New Orleans businesses.
I also love the fact that they donate a portion of their search profits to charity. For a startup, this is a exceptionally wonderful choice. Currently, the beneficiaries of Huckabuck’s Social Mission are Tipitina’s Foundation, working to rebuild New Orlean’s music culture, and the Backbeat Foundation, also supporting musicians in New Orleans. As a musician myself, I certainly find their goals uplifting.

More information:

• Huckabuck Blog
• Phil Bradley on Huckabuck
• eHub Interview with Huckabuck

I own a fairly large number of books. In fact, I own enough books that about four years ago I decided it was worth my time to build a database containing my library which I could keep on my PC and on my PDA. This little catalog provided about a half-dozen fields which I could perform searches on or sort by date, category, author, or title. It’s a nice little thing – but kind of a pain to maintain. The process of exporting the library back and forth between my PC and my PDA is a little awkward. The time to write in each item is a little annoying. Altogether, it’s not ideal. But, it was free.

The Web 2.0 phenomenon of bookmark sharing, image sharing, and social collaboration online has, unsurprisingly, also resulted in at least two (that I know of) online library sharing services – Librarious and LibraryThing.

What do I need from an online library service?

My priorities for such an online service are as follows:

• Make it easy for me to add to my library.
• Make certain I can add everything in my library.
• Let me use my library from a handheld browser – I want to check whether I already own something while I’m out bookshopping!
• Allow me to choose whether I’m going to share my library (or specific items in my library) with others.

In addition to these issues, which are important to me as a user of an online library, I’m also concerned about certain issues with these sites as I would be with any site.

• Good searching and sorting functions.
• Privacy and data collection policies.
• Web site accessibility.
• Web standards compliance.

Some of these could easily jump between lists, but I’ve split them up for ease of reference.

Critical Library Service Functionality

Make it easy for me…

Both services make it reasonably easy to add new titles. In Librarious, you have two options. You can search for books from the "add item" form, and add items directly from that form using AJAXian tricks and treats, or you can use the provided bookmarklet to add titles while browsing Amazon.com. The "add item" form is not perfect – there is no "Submit" button for the query. The search is performed as soon as the input box loses focus. This is easy – but not intuitive.

LibraryThing is even easier – it provides a side-by-side two-paneled interface where you can submit your search (with a submit button) and browse a list of results in the neighboring panel. You simply need to click on the title of an item to add it immediately to your list.

Both systems have advantages and disadvantages, and it’s not clear to me that there’s any need to discuss this particular aspect further, since there’s no clear winner. There will be on the next point, however.

Make certain I can add everything in my library

I own some rather obscure books – things I’ve picked up from library discard sales, at used book shops, etc. Librarious has a major flaw in their library system. You can only add items which appear in Amazon.com’s catalog. There’s no free hand entry, and no alternate database to query. A couple of the more obscure items in my library were simply not available.

LibraryThing, however, not only offers the ability to manually input a book, it also provides searching against library catalogs and Amazon.com. You can specify your search against libraries in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, or the Library of Congress. In this area, LibraryThing provides a vastly superior capacity to Librarious. (You even have the ability to view the MARC records!)

Mobile Browsing of my Library

Well, at the moment I don’t own a mobile browser. However, on the basis of tests using Opera’s small screen rendering and their Opera Mini simulator, I’m able to come up with some general appraisals.

LibraryThing, in general, performed better than I expected. Opera’s small screen rendering does a pretty phenomenal job of managing the table-based design. Although there are some limitations to the simulator, I found the site pretty easy to navigate. I was able to quickly access the search function, and fairly easy to browse my own collection of books. It’s not been designed with mobile navigation in mind – but does manage fairly well.

Librarious, although using a more contemporary CSS-based design, is actually less usable when linearized in Opera Mini. Unfortunately, the code is ordered such that a panel containing news announcements and another panel containing a Librarious-wide tag cloud precede your library listing. With no internal page navigation provided, this makes for quite a lot of scrolling to get to your own books. In general, it’s OK – but painful because it COULD be so much better.

What if I don’t WANT to share?

Well, as far as I can tell, neither service provides any means to choose NOT to share a particular book. There will be no need for the government to acquire a search warrant for my library, alas! LibraryThing does offer the option to keep your entire library private; but this isn’t exactly what I had in mind. I do like the social aspect of the online library.

General Functionality

Searching and Sorting

On any site, the ability to search is absolutely critical. On a library collection site, this simply becomes MORE critical.

I hate to say this for any site, but Librarious has a HORRIBLE search function. The search box is located well below the fold in the right panel of the 3-column layout. The search function does not appear on every page – in particular, it does not appear on the home page. Given that a search is quite likely one of the first things I’d potentially want to do on visiting, this is a MAJOR flaw.

Not only does the search function fail to appear on every page – it is not actually the same SEARCH on each page. Depending on the section of the site you are currently browsing, you will be searching a different data index. Perhaps the creator felt this was a neat advantage, but to my sense of usability, this is a huge mistake.
If you have navigated to your collection page, you have the ability to sort your list according to five categories – title, author, rating, date added, and popularity. You also have the ability to search your collection or browse by tag.

However, if instead you’ve navigated to the "Users" page, you are presented with the ability to search all media. (Actually, you are presented with a search of a non-existent index "medias" – but this is clearly a typo.) On navigating to the "books" page, your view is that of the most recent books added with the same sort options – and the search is of all books.

The variability of the search feature is moderately intuitive – not always, but mostly. However, the site has only that single one-book interface for search (no advanced search) and I feel that the box, in order to be helpful to visitors, should really remain consistent.

LibraryThing has a much more traditional search interface. It also has no search tool on the main page, but unlike Librarious (with no link to a search function at all), it provides a prominent link to the search page at the top of the screen. They provide 7 separate searches, for books and tags within your library, and for books, tags, authors, users, and user locations for all libraries. Although not inspiring, this offers a quite reasonable degree of functionality.

Privacy and Data Collection

It’s important to always be aware of what kind of data you are offering up to a service. And when you’re providing such extensive personal data as a multi-thousand item library, you should definitely consider who will have access to what information.

On privacy, once again, LibraryThing wins hands down. First of all, it actually has a privacy policy. Not only this, but it’s privacy policy seems very reasonable and honestly concerned with your privacy. With LibraryThing’s ability to keep your entire library private and profile private, you’ve got good reason for confidence concerning your data.

Librarious, unfortunately, doesn’t appear to provide any kind of privacy policy. Nor can you make your library private. So, no benefits there. It’s not that I believe their untrustworthy – I seriously doubt that they’ll be selling library lists to the government, for example. However, it’s very comforting to have everything written out and explicit.

Neither service, however, actually requires any personally identifying data at all in order to use the service. You only need to provide a username and password to use both services. So it does appear, despite the lack of an explicity privacy policy for Librarious, that you could sit reasonably secure if you’re bothered.

Web Accessibility and Standards

This review has gotten a lot longer than I originally intended – so I’m going to let this pass with a cursory glance. Suffice it to say that neither site has done anything of significance to consider accessibility, and neither site successfully validates. In fact, both sites failed validation quite badly.

I wouldn’t see that either site is a nightmare for accessibility, when it comes to basic navigation, but they are both AJAX-ian services – and it is inevitable that a significant degree of functionality is lost without the use of Javascript. However, it must be said that LibraryThing does maintain a significant level of functionality even without JavaScript, because it is not, infact, an AJAX service. It has made use of iFrames and other tricks which look very similar. Although this technology is less "Web 2.0", it behaves much more successfully when Javascript is not available.

To sum up:

Both of these projects are the results of very dedicated work from individual programmers. LibraryThing was developed by Tim Spalding, a web developer and publisher based in Portland, Maine. Librarious is the project of one person who appears to go to a great deal of effort not to provide his name anywhere. In my hour and a half writing this and half an hour explicitly searching for it, I failed to find a name. Regardless, Librarious is certainly the more recent project – still in Alpha, the project was begun, apparently, around January of 2006. LibraryThing dates at least back to August of 2005, which is the earliest entry of it’s blog. In addition, LibraryThing requires a $25 lifetime subscription or a $10/year fee to maintain a library greater than 200 books. This gives it the advantage of an income.

At any rate, I have to favor LibraryThing as my online library of choice, given everything I’ve looked at above. Although neither project is perfect, LibraryThing has fewer flaws – and a lot more project transparency.

However, it would be very valuable if Mojeek could add a Lushe-like bookmarklet to add sites to your site search.

Marc: I’ve not come across Lushe.net before but will check it out properly later. Having a bookmarklet like they do is a great idea and I will look into that definitely.

I’m also concerned by the fact that you can’t add unindexed sites to your list – as I commented in my previous article, the Mojeek index was far from being the most current available, and one site I tried to add (this one) was not yet indexed.

Marc: The ability to add unindexed sites will be available soon! Also, which will not be immediately noticeable, sites listed within personal search accounts will get crawled and refreshed more often, hopefully making the feature even more useful.

Finally, it would be very useful to be able to establish more than one personalized search. At the moment, it appears that one user is associated with one personalized search – but I would consider it quite reasonable that I would want more than one personalized group of sites.

Marc: You can have multiple accounts if you like but adding multiple groups to the same account is more complicated but I will take note and look into it as that’s a good idea.

Marc: The phrase "Edit Listed Sites" isn’t crystal clear to me, as it doesn’t specify the purpose for the listing – perhaps "Edit Personal Search" would be more clear. However, it’s far from being a major point of concern.

The one thing I would want to change about the interface is that you cannot access your personal search from the main Mojeek home page.

Marc: Both points taken and I’ll consider changing the phrases to something more obvious and adding a link to the home page, although the idea was that people would use their own personal search page rather than the main Mojeek page.

It’s also worth noting that one advantage of the Mojeek personal search is the ability to use it as a site search tool. If you selected only your own site as the selected site, it will act effectively to search your site. However, this tool will only becoming truly useful if the indexing rate speeds up sufficiently to keep a current index.

Marc: You can also do site searches by appending &r=site.com to the search url (or using the advanced search page), once searching a site the search boxes will have the option to search that site again..

http://www.mojeek.com/search?q=search&r=www.mojeek.com

Although the advantage of having it listed in a personal search is that the site will be refreshed more often.

Personal search accounts are currently only available in Beta testing, and must be requested personally – visit Mojeek Personal Search (Beta) for more information!

Mojeek Personal Search: Functionality

Mojeek’s personal search gives you the ability to create a set of preferred sites to search. You can list as many as you wish, as far as I can tell, provided that they have already been indexed by the Mojeek crawler. This is a similar functionality to that provided by Lushe.net. Where Lushe.net manages a database of your preferred sites but uses Google’s search engine, Mojeek centralizes these functions into a single site.

One additional feature offered by Mojeek is the ability to exclude sites from all Mojeek web searches. If you know that you NEVER want to read documents from, say, Fox News, you are able to exclude that site from your site results. While you are logged in, the option to add to your personal search or exclude from results is provided as part of all search results.

The personal search option is welcome and still relatively unique, but there are a number of ways in which it could be improved.

Combined with the flexibility of Mojeek’s alternative algorithm search options (still rudimentary), this personal search could have great potential. However, it would be very valuable if Mojeek could add a Lushe-like bookmarklet to add sites to your site search. I’m also concerned by the fact that you can’t add unindexed sites to your list – as I commented in my previous article, the Mojeek index was far from being the most current available, and one site I tried to add (this one) was not yet indexed. Granted, the site is only a month and a half old, but I could hope! A highly useful service would be the ability to request a crawl of sites which were not in the index.
Finally, it would be very useful to be able to establish more than one personalized search. At the moment, it appears that one user is associated with one personalized search – but I would consider it quite reasonable that I would want more than one personalized group of sites.

Mojeek Personal Search: Interface

In general, the interface for Mojeek Personal Search is simple and straightforward, just like their main search interface. The first view on logging in is of your basic personal information. There are only five other options of places to go: your personal search home page, three editing pages: personal information (optional, can be public or private), edit listed sites (sites to be searched by your personal search), and edit excluded sites (sites not to be searched by web search), and help. The phrase "Edit Listed Sites" isn’t crystal clear to me, as it doesn’t specify the purpose for the listing – perhaps "Edit Personal Search" would be more clear. However, it’s far from being a major point of concern.

The one thing I would want to change about the interface is that you cannot access your personal search from the main Mojeek home page. When logged in, you have the option to switch between searching the web and searching your own selected sites on all other pages – but on the home page you have no such choice. A minor thing, but something which would make the site that much more user-friendly.

Other Comments

It’s also worth noting that one advantage of the Mojeek personal search is the ability to use it as a site search tool. If you selected only your own site as the selected site, it will act effectively to search your site. However, this tool will only becoming truly useful if the indexing rate speeds up sufficiently to keep a current index.

The search engine continues to have great potential – between the personal search, site search, and alternate algorithm selection there are some useful tools available. The suggestions above, I believe, could allow it to build even further and possibly gain some footing in the search world. User-controlled search factors is likely to be one of the most valuable developments in search technology in the next generation of search.

For more information on user-controlled search factors, read Adding more factors to Microsoft’s sliders, by Bill Slawski. Microsoft is taking a different approach to user modified searching than Mojeek which may also have interesting repercussions for search.