Updated its search features bring it on par with rivals-but with several added twists.
America Online announced several new features for AOL Search in a bid to help create a more customizable and comprehensive search experience. The new features are the result of extensive consumer testing on AOL’s part and are available at: http://search.aol.com/.
While AOL Search is still powered by Google, they have long worked on ways to create a unique experience for searchers. From highly specific vertical searches like media search and local search to user-friendly search features like Snapshot Answers and Smartbox Suggestions, AOL has managed to create one of the best search experiences for a site lacking an original algorithm.
AOL Web search results come from Google, so the company is focusing on enhancements to the user interface and proprietary content to differentiate itself, according to Jim Riesenbach, senior vice president of AOL Search & Directional Media. We are trying to create a slightly different experience that’s more targeted to what we believe our users are looking for and to the assets we have, he said.
For starters, AOL has taken some of their specialized search topics and meshed the results with their standard algorithmic listings. That means that users will now get a combination of Google results along with audio and video clips, pictures and product listings. They have also said that they plan to add local and news results to the mix before too long. They have also added their Smartbox Suggestions feature which attempts to guess what you are looking for as you type.
Some other new features:
Saved Searches:
Another new feature introduced lets users save search results, so that the next time they perform the same search, it will automatically appear at the top of the results. They can choose to save searches manually by clicking a scissors icon or opt to have AOL Search automatically remember searches from the last 30 days. Saved Searches are organized a box in the left-hand column of the page. If a user is signed in to AOL, searches are saved on AOL’s servers, where they can be accessed from any machine.
New clustering technology takes the top 100 search results and groups them into topics, in order to make it easier for people to refine their searches.
This feature was designed to allow users to click on a result and save it for future searches. It works by popping up an image of a pair of scissors whenever a user mouse over a search results. Selecting the scissors icon causes the result to be snipped and stored. The idea is to help people find sites that they’ve liked it then past and to automatically push them to the top of the rankings on any future searches.
Quick Answers:
Looking for a quick answer to a simple question and do not feel like actually visiting a web page? AOL’s new Quick Answers is supposed to be the key to this, but like similar features on other engines, this one still has a ways to go. The idea is to allow users to enter natural-language search queries and to then match up those searches with AOL’s existing Snapshot Answers feature.
The feature works by pulling data from sources like the CIA Fact Book, the Worldbook Encyclopedia, Wikipedia and Merriam-Webster. The answers, if there is one, appear above the web results and are usually short snippets with a link to the source of the information. While this could be a handy feature anywhere, it takes time to get enough data entered to start to be able to answer all of the common questions that people could have.
Expanded Snapshots Answers:
The final new feature to be added to AOL search is actually an expansion of an existing option. Snapshot Answers have been a part of AOL search for a while now, compiled by a team of editors and manually placed at the top of the search results for certain queries. AOL has expanded that program to cover more than four million search terms along with some Spanish-language queries.
While search rivals MSN, Yahoo, Google and Ask Jeeves offer the ability to perform searches of specific kinds of content such as video, audio, images and news, for the most part they require the searcher to choose between the different content types. The new AOL Search returns results from all content types, separated into six categories: pictures, video, audio, news, local and shopping.
Overall, the new additions are useful, especially for searchers that are looking for quick answers to common questions. AOL also continues to show that you don’t necessarily have to have your own algorithm to create a unique search experience.