As the web has grown and matured over the years, those of us who spend a substantial fraction of our lives online have had to develop increasingly sophisticated strategies for locating information. Simple links and word-of-mouth and directories gave way to first-generation search engines, which for many people have reached the pinnacle of their development with Google’s reputation-based PageRank algorithm.
But as web workers we know that PageRank isn’t the end of the story. We’ve developed targeted ways to find particular types of information, using specialized search engines, social networks, and other tools. Meanwhile, in another part of the virtual landscape, metasearch engines such as Dogpile tackled the search problem by trying to combine the results of many search engines together.
Submit a query to a metasearch engines and it turns around and asks the same question of a variety of first-generation engines, collating the results together into a single page. Unfortunately this “more is better” mode of operation tends to just result in more chaff surrounding the same few kernels of wheat.
Serph is the first example I’ve seen of something I’ve been expecting for a while: a targeted metasearch engine – and in an area where many web workers have an interest, to boot. Serph’s elevator pitch is “we help you track buzz” – by which they mean that the sources they focus on are places like Technorati, Google Blog Search, Digg, Flickr, Sphere, Feedster, You Tube, del.icio.us, Bloglines, Feedster, and so on.
The idea is to look only in places where people start talking about new things first, so that you have a search engine that takes the pulse of buzz – or at least of what the online chattering classes have to say. In line with the buzz-tracking premise, results are sorted with the most recent appearing at the top of the list. Search feeds are promised for the future, to allow you to do continued tracking on topics that interest you, though that’s not working right at the moment.
Does it work? I took the service for a spin with a couple of searches to find out. Looking for information on “FON” today turns up the free router giveaways at the top of the list, with a couple of links to GigaOm’s offer on the first page. “Vista” turns up around 300 results (surely there’s more buzz than that?) which seem heavily skewed towards negative experiences; that matches up well with the common perception that the blogosphere is full of kvetchers, and could be useful information for a PR person trying to do damage control.
“Joe Biden” brings back 122 results, with reactions to today’s campaign announcement at the top of the list. All in all, Serph seems to fulfill its promise of bringing back fresh results with an emphasis on the latest buzz, which not having nearly the depth of coverage of more mainstream search engines.
Serph is in closed beta right now, but if you give them your e-mail address on the home page you should get an invitation within 24 hours. If you’re doing any sort of PR work, or involved in a product or service launch, it belongs in your bag of tricks.
{"source":"https:\/\/gigaom.com\/2007\/02\/01\/serph\/wijax\/49e8740702c6da9341d50357217fb629","varname":"wijax_41d3b59ff68ac8b3ec2b4ac8316ba2b9","title_element":"header","title_class":"widget-title","title_before":"%3Cheader%20class%3D%22widget-title%22%3E","title_after":"%3C%2Fheader%3E"}