Blog
network 9rules has developed a custom-built search engine for its members’ content. I’ve always
admired 9rules’ philosophy (note: R/WW used to be a member), because they’re all about
original content and design. Now they’re trying to make it easier for others to discover
all that great content, with a search interface that only searches content in the 9rules
community. Mike Rundle
explains:
“The first year or so of 9rules existence was about grouping great content together,
and if I had to categorize the next year I’d say our goal is to now distribute this
content in interesting and meaningful ways and 9rules Search is the start of this next
big push.”
Mike has a full list of the features in his post,
but the ones I liked the best are integrated communities (“go directly to the Community
associated with that particular entry if you want to read more on that topic”) and some
nifty Ajax work to integrate Flickr and YouTube. Features I’d like to see in future
include RSS feeds for topics (e.g. I may want to subscribe to 9rules members on ‘web
design’) and perhaps the good old tag cloud could be employed.
Custom or social search is a product category that I’m tracking, because it brings the
‘social web’ element to probably the most important of all Web interfaces: the search
box. Eurekster is a great example of an
up-and-coming social search company – they believe that niche and DIY search engines are
the way of the future. I’ll be exploring more of this in the near future. In the meantime
check out Ebrahim Ezzy’s two-part series here on R/WW in July, Search 2.0 vs Traditional
Search (and Part
2). And congrats to 9rules for bringing social search to their community!
