Ask2Roger

Search engines are experimenting with new technologies to provide users with precise results. Searching the web is like finding new ways to easily access what you are searching for. We as users explore and experiment using keywords. So for a user using the right keywords is the way to find what he is searching for. A user generally searches for accessing or concentrating on a particular topic. He generally wants to find answers to his questions. So he wants more choices. A search engine provides users with relevant results, but it is possible that there may be at least a few irrelevant search results. As we navigate through results for a particular keyword from one page to other we become more and more distant from the topic we are searching for. That is the number of irrelevant search results increases.
A new kind of search engines are emerging that will try to provide users with more relevant and related search results as possible as they can and they are known as discovery search engines. A discovery search engine is not like an ordinary search engine. It did not try to provide users with pages that are related to a particular keyword; instead they will provide users with results based on the web pages they are currently visiting. So it can be called as a "real time" search result generation engine. In order to get a web page as a result you either have to enter the URL of the web page or type a keyword related to that page in a search engine. Then only you can use a discovery search engine to discover new pages similar to that web page. So a discovery search engine cannot be used as a "primary search engine". It is a "secondary search engine" because you have to start your search with a keyword typed in a search engine like Google or Yahoo etc. When you get a relevant result from these search engines, and you click on that link to land on that page, from there on you can use a discovery search engine to discover and explore more pages like the web page you are currently visiting.
Ambiently
Ambiently is a discovery search engine in its beta. It is considered as the first discovery search engine in the world, but anyway it is the most popular discovery search engine now. Getting started with Ambiently is very easy. First point your browser to Ambiently website. There you will see a small button on the left side at the top.

You have to drag and drop this link button into the navigation bar of your browser or bookmark it. Now like what I have said before start your search with Google or other search engine and when you land on a web page just click on the Ambient Page button to get an Ambient page similar to that web page. There is a small Jump button that you will see on the right side of links generated by Ambient. When you click on this button you can get results similar to a web page link without directly landing on that page. This will help you find what you are searching for more easily.
Benefits of Ambiently
What is the use of a discovery search engine like Ambiently? The web has a complex structure. The information we want did not reside on a single page. It is scattered among different pages on different websites. A search engine cannot index all these pages. The probability of these pages appearing in a search result depends on the keyword used to describe that page, page rank, and lot of other features. So if the page is not optimized to be crawled by search engines the possibility of that link appearing in a search engine is nil. Most importantly it depends on the keywords you use. If the keywords you used to search a term is similar to the page containing the information you want, then only you got that page as search result.




There remains lot of Web Pages that are not properly indexed or unknown by search engines because of these. This is where discovery search engines come into play. A discovery search engine tries to break the "right keyword" barrier between a search engine and a user there by providing them with more relevant search results.
What Ambiently do?
According to the creators of Ambienlty:"Most obviously, Ambiently is simpler than a search engine. On a search engine, you need to think of a good query and type it into a search box. Using Ambiently, all these steps are unnecessary. With Ambiently, all you need to do is to click a button. That action leads to a list of web links related to the current web page. In other words, every web page now is an automated "search engine" for a special topic, i.e., the topic of the page.

One of the biggest problems with today’s search experience is that we often know roughly what we want but cannot easily think of the right query. Sometimes our need is broader than a simple query can describe. With Ambiently, this action is not necessary. You get relevant web information by one click.

Using a search engine, you get web links related to your query. However, you also get web links related to the Web Pages you are reading, viewing, or enjoying. As the noted author Peter Morville said, the future of search will be "a future where search and browsing work together." Ambiently is doing just that."

I hope you enjoyed the post.