Icerocket is one of those really useful search engines that most people don't know about. It's also one of my favourites as well. It's recently added in some new functionality that I think is quite interesting. When you visit the site the search tab option is by default set to 'Blogs' rather than 'Web'. This makes more and more sense, since increasingly these days I tend to be looking for news and current affairs information rather than tired old webpages. However, they've also added a 'Twitter' search option as a tab - the first search engine that I'm aware of which has done that. It also has an RSS option for searches, which is one of the strengths of the search engine, and a reason that I'm such a fan.
They have also introduced what they're calling 'The Big Buzz' as a trending tool. If you use the tab and run a search Icerocket returns recent (less than 1 hour) results that it culls from weblogs, Twitter, Video, News, and Images. The results are arranged chronologically with the option of an auto refresh of 1, 3 or 5 minutes, with of course the RSS option. The whole area of news and social media is one that is seemingly passing Google straight on by. My 'plane crash' search is pulling up content that is seconds old, but over at Google the default is material that is now hours old. Sure, I can limit content to the last hour, which is helpful, but I'm still not getting the breadth of information coverage that I'm getting with Icerocket.
Like it or not, Google has always been wedded to the idea that web pages are what make up the Internet, and a few years ago they were absolutely right. However, as we all know, times change increasingly rapidly these days and the smaller less well known engines are able to twist and turn to take advantage of new resources such as Twitter. Google on the other hand is less like an 800 lb gorilla these days and more like an ocean going tanker - it takes it a very long time to stop or change position and cheerfully continues to steam in the wrong direction while the little tugs that flitter around it are so much more mobile and ultimately that much more useful. If anything is going to dent Google and cause people to look in different places for their information needs it's going to be this. If I'm wanting to keep up to date about the inauguration next week there is no way that I'd consider using Google to do this. The Icerocket Big Buzz on the other hand - a much more compelling proposition.
A screenshot of the Big Buzz below:
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