I'll admit to being a little skeptical when I took a look at BeyondAdze, for a couple of reasons. First of all, you have to register with the search engine before you can start to use it. This is not good - it's an obstacle that will stop 90%+ of people right there and then. Secondly, you get a certain number of credits per month to use for searches - want more searches, you have to pay. This isn't a good sign either, and however good the engine is - people are going to be unhappy with that whole concept. Thirdly, a search can take an hour. Yup, I know, I know.
So, with three strikes against it already, why am I still writing about it? Simply put - it's rather good. What it tries to do is to identify good quality websites first, and then particularly good pages after that. The idea is that you give it a key concept, and then other keywords to fine tune the search. It then goes off and number crunches for a while (minimum of an hour) and then throws back a whole heap of results. These results are based on site, then on pages in the site. Some of these pages are unlikely to turn up in the results you'd run with a 'normal' search, so while it's not exactly searching the deep web, it does bring you back pages you won't otherwise see.
It's also important to know that it's not giving you answers, just sites and pages that may contain the answer to your query, so to that extent it's also a little bit like directory search engines (remember those?) and so it's a two stage process.
It's a really interesting approach, but I think the aforementioned obstacles are going to cause big problems for it. However, if you have an hour to spare in order to let a search engine run around after you and then email you when it's done, give it a bash!
So, with three strikes against it already, why am I still writing about it? Simply put - it's rather good. What it tries to do is to identify good quality websites first, and then particularly good pages after that. The idea is that you give it a key concept, and then other keywords to fine tune the search. It then goes off and number crunches for a while (minimum of an hour) and then throws back a whole heap of results. These results are based on site, then on pages in the site. Some of these pages are unlikely to turn up in the results you'd run with a 'normal' search, so while it's not exactly searching the deep web, it does bring you back pages you won't otherwise see.
It's also important to know that it's not giving you answers, just sites and pages that may contain the answer to your query, so to that extent it's also a little bit like directory search engines (remember those?) and so it's a two stage process.
It's a really interesting approach, but I think the aforementioned obstacles are going to cause big problems for it. However, if you have an hour to spare in order to let a search engine run around after you and then email you when it's done, give it a bash!
Apart from the cost, it actually reminds me a bit of what happens when you ask a librarian to do a search for you - they make you register; and then you have to wait for it; but the quality of the results is much better than raw google or bing. It's the delayed-gratification for quality paradigm ... but I suspect a good librarian is still going to be the winner!
Posted by: Gillian | May 21, 2010 at 09:34 PM
Gillian (above) has hit the nail on the head. "Quality" of information is the goal of BeyondAdze. Your comment (Phil) about waiting an hour or more, depending on the option you select is an important one. Supposing you had the choice of conducting a search yourself for an hour, hitting "next page" again and again to find what you wanted, or having a robot do this for you while you get on with more productive work, my guess is you'd probably let the robot get on with it.
Whether BeyondAdze delivers sufficiently well targeted results to give you that freedom is another matter, but why not set it running the next time you decide to spend 15 minutes looking for something and when it's finished, compare the links it's suggested with what you came up with on your own? My guess is that it will have found a few interesting sites that you didn't.
Phil.D, BeyondAdze
Posted by: Phil D | May 23, 2010 at 10:04 AM