Is search enough?

I’ve been thinking - and yes it did hurt - is a simple search engine, or even an extremely complicated search engine for that matter - really enough in the modern mass content age?

Lets look at the content first and I’ll dabble into the search later.

This blog, this fairly pointless nonsensical mass of ramblings has nearly 700 posts - that’s 700 separate pieces of content (not including images, audio and video files I’ve attached over the years).

This is a tiny blog - I have around 30 subscribers to my feed and about 20 thousand PIs a week. But I’ve still managed to generate 700 pieces of searchable content in just over two years.

I’ve also got over 2000 photos on Flickr plus about 12 videos on You Tube - not to mention Facebook, message boards and My Space - all of which is MORE searchable content.

The BBC Jersey website - my day job - has over 20 thousand pages and thousands of images - again all searchable content.

That’s just the tiny part of the web I occupy - tens of thousands of pieces of content - some of which is interesting ALL of which is available through search (if you try hard enough).

So when you add in millions of other people doing what I do and hundreds of people doing MUCH MORE than what I’m doing AND all the organizations producing their own piles of virtual paper - you’ve got a shit load of stuff to find.

Or more likely not to find. How many stories, tricks, ideas, pictures and messages are missed every day because it’s lost within the sheer mass of content that’s littering the internets?

So search

At the moment almost everybody uses Google to get their information, to find their stories, to search - millions upon millions of people go to the site, type into THAT box and hope for the best.

Unfortunately HOPE is about all you’ve got to arm yourself with and Google is by far the best.

So this is why I ask the question - Is search enough? In its current form has google really got what it takes anymore?

Other search engines have, like Ask (hence the Jeeves and Wooster photo), started offering ‘extras’ with the basic search query - a mashed page that includes Wikipedia facts, Flickr images and You Tube videos - but its still fairly limited.

If you’re looking for something slightly obscure then this is a pretty good approach - it gives you the basics and leaves the rest up to you - but Ask’s search is rubbish.

Then there are sites like Mahalo that’s all human edited - it basically takes the Open Directory concept to another level. Instead of using humans to assign websites to a directory - this starts with a topic and uses humans to pull together a range of content features and links.

It even does some of what Google News does - but better. It gives you the headlines from a range of different sites, covering a range of different angles as well as fast facts and blog links (see bhutto page).

But there is ONE big downside to Mahalo - it can only add new topics as fast as editors can create them and as editors are paid I can’t imagine it will be THAT quickly.

The other downside is that - I had to use Google to search for the site - making the most of the Google spell checker.

In the end it all comes back to Google I suppose.

But what I really want is pretty much what Mahalo offers but not quit - I basically want to search for something and have the results come back as well as Google does - but to also be shown photos related to my search, a separate column showing blog posts talking about my search, news stories on that same search, videos on the search term AND quick facts as well - but in a neat easy to digest way.

In fact I’d like my search tool to be able to scour the pages of every site and determine whether it really did reflect what I searched for and display, right there on the page (along with all the other things I’ve already mentioned) everything I need to know about that term.

Not too much to ask is it?

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