DeeperWeb‘s recently released add-on/plugin for IE and Firefox allows users to see traditional Google search results with enhanced results in a sidebar.
The suite of DeeperWeb enhancements to Google results include tag clouds, metrics, Q&As, and results from specific sources such as journalism sites, blogs, and Wikipedia. And unlike other next-gen search engines, DeeperWeb plays nice with Google, allowing users to maintain the familiarity of the Google interface and the reliability of Google results while experimenting with new paradigms.
The company just released its beta search engine extension/plugin, and the possibilities are quite interesting.
The tag clouds in particular are helpful for suggesting new keywords or areas to search, and users can click terms to instantly add or exclude them and get more focused results.
According to DeepCloud’s website, businesses and marketers can also use the tags as a simple, fast, and free means of “identifying main competitors, pinpointing targeted sites for most effective advertisement, and isolating the authoritative websites of a particular topic.” While larger companies would have far more sophisticated tools at their disposal, this could be a good starting point for small businesses.
Narrowing search results by source and type of media also has great implications for individual productivity. For example, searching for statistical information on peanut butter using Google alone yields strange and limited results and takes quite a bit more time than Googling “peanut butter” and letting DeeperWeb’s Metrics tab sort out the empirical data on that most sticky of condiments.
Better yet, co-founder Alex Rinsky said in a phone conversation this afternoon that the next version, slated to be released in 2-3 weeks, will allow users to further narrow news results based on industry (business, tech, general, etc.) and will provide options for searching for video, podcast, slide deck, and other multimedia results.
