Local Search

For anyone involved in the local search / directory search space, What Is the Right Local Product Strategy and Local Search: The Data and the Product are two posts from Greg Sterling well worth reading.

Intent-Driven Search

I’ve been playing with a new demo from Yahoo Research that enables you to skew results to more closely match the intent of your query. By moving a slider at the top of results pages, you can emphasize results that are more “commercial” or more “informational” (i.e., from academic, non-commercial, or research-oriented sources).

This is an interesting twist on search – good to see continuing efforts to drive innovation in search!

Long Tail of Search

Interesting thoughts on opening up search engines to third party developers. Combined with a Rollyo type approach of selecting your own sources and a start.com type approach of selecting those widgets of interest to you, the search experience starts to become much more personalized and useful to individuals and less of a “one size fits all” approach. Kind of a “long tail” solution to search…