Welcome to the Third Age of Search
By Nicolas Kayser-Bril  Translated by Mark Cramer

At the dawn of time, while France loved the Twingo as much as she hated Aimé Jacquet, search engines were still called AltaVista and Lycos. In response to a query, they searched their index, searching for words in the requested pages in memory. They proudly returned with approximate results.

Then came 2000, the third album by Gerald de Palmas and the success of the revolutionary engine Google. In contrast to its predecessors, Google takes into account the reputation of various sites to establish its results. PageRank, the obsession of all webmasters, reflects the relative popularity of each page. To be at the top of Internet search, the page’s content is no longer enough, we must take into account its relations.

Eight years later, the day of an ordinary marriage, Google entered the third age. The results will henceforth be organized based on previous searches, announced the mastodon. Although the function existed previously in Beta version, it now applies to all those who have a Google account, such as AdSense, iGoogle and GMail, among others.

Once you are identified, Google records your history and uses it to provide more relevant results. You can always disable it by clicking “History,” top right on the results page, and then “Pause”.

Two years ago, AOL mistakenly published the search histories of 650,000 subscribers. Although anonymous, data made it possible to retrace the private lives of multiple users.

Surf Canyon: Sharpener of Searches

Nevertheless, the personalization of search engines attracts even the startups. Surf Canyon, a complementary module for Firefox and Internet Explorer, observes the links clicked on the results page of Google and then deduces the subject of your research.

If you ask Google “haski” for example, you will be presented with pretty photos of canines. Few pages, on the other hand, of your preferred media magnate. Find an appropriate result, click on the icon shaped target and Surf Canyon will find other relevant pages, buried in the mass of subsequent results. Somewhat like Google’s “similar pages,” but more useful.

Alain Joannès spoke of such last November, seeing a way to refine searches without giving away too much control. In a new post, he describes the benefits of the program in action. Time saved: ten minutes for a search. Following his pattern, we understand how Surf Canyon can refine a search, digging in the vein the most relevant.

 

For experienced users, such technology may seem superfluous. However, most complaints from Internet users remain very sketchy.By analyzing more than a billion searches, four scientists found that more than half of them use not more than two words and only one in five has a logical operator – specifications that enable clarifying searches (if that seems obtuse, Google has a very good tutorial).

To improve productivity on the web, it would be better to train users. Less dangerous and probably more effective than an Orwellian inventory past searches.

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