If anyone has visited this blog in the last few days via a Google search, they would have noticed something interesting in the sidebar, courtesy of Lijit.
Let’s say you search for “Nature Precedings” in Google. My article is up near the top, so you might click on the link. When you get there, here is what you might see in the sidebar
In my previous post on Lijit, I had talked about trust. The fact that you get recommendations based on your search terms and a possibly trustworthy source (e.g. someone who shows up high in a Google search) is a real aid in driving knowledge discovery. I just added my Connotea library (something that the might be a good idea to be provided as one of the defaults) to the search index. Essentially you are getting a vertical search, except that in true long tail fashion, you get many vertical searches for the same field. That the vertical search might provide you related information makes it that much more powerful. It’s one of the reasons I like Sphere as well. Doesn’t always work, but can be quite useful.
I am not 100% sure of the underpinnings of Lijit, other than the Google Custom Search aspect. Perhaps they could take advantage of another area that Google is getting into, recommendation. If you combine the current search paradigm with recommendations from similar searcher, or perhaps add social networking features, essentially an extra layer, based on whose Lijit Wijits I like (if that is there I apologize), then it would be interesting to see if the utility goes up, or gets too noisy.
It looks like Blogger on draft is now providing a similar search feature. It automatically creates a Google Custom search from the blog content and what we linked. This is an interesting direction for people powered search. I am not sure how, but this could then feedback to the main Google search.
I added the Lijit to my (main) blog this weekend, and looks rather interesting. I had not seen the 'Looking for more about' feature yet, which I think is cool. What I don't get is why they need my del.icuo.us password to get my 'old' bookmarks... apparently the DIU API needs it, but they can access it via the webpage without pwd...
The "Looking for more" feature is known as Re-Search. It's very cool. (When someone comes from a search engine we "re"-search your content with the same search term.) You can read more about it on our blog at http://www.lijit.com/blog/2007/04/30/re-search-...
It was cool to see Google adding something similar to Blogger. Very sincere flattery, I think. :) But Lijit offers all of those features plus a ton more: - Searching your content across multiple sources (e.g. your delicious bookmarks) - In-depth search stats of what users are searching for, and more. (e.g. http://www.lijit.com/users/bfeld/stats) - "Surprise Me" button, a sort of StumbleUpon for all your content. - Automatic syncing with all your other accounts.
Knowledge discovery via Lijit
If anyone has visited this blog in the last few days via a Google search, they would have noticed something interesting in the sidebar, courtesy of Lijit.
Let’s say you search for “Nature Precedings” in Google. My article is up near the top, so you might click on the link. When you get there, here is what you might see in the sidebar
In my previous post on Lijit, I had talked about trust. The fact that you get recommendations based on your search terms and a possibly trustworthy source (e.g. someone who shows up high in a Google search) is a real aid in driving knowledge discovery. I just added my Connotea library (something that the might be a good idea to be provided as one of the defaults) to the search index. Essentially you are getting a vertical search, except that in true long tail fashion, you get many vertical searches for the same field. That the vertical search might provide you related information makes it that much more powerful. It’s one of the reasons I like Sphere as well. Doesn’t always work, but can be quite useful.
I am not 100% sure of the underpinnings of Lijit, other than the Google Custom Search aspect. Perhaps they could take advantage of another area that Google is getting into, recommendation. If you combine the current search paradigm with recommendations from similar searcher, or perhaps add social networking features, essentially an extra layer, based on whose Lijit Wijits I like (if that is there I apologize), then it would be interesting to see if the utility goes up, or gets too noisy.
Technorati Tags: Lijit, Search, Knowledge Discovery