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Ask HN: Review my search tool (walabok.com)

11 points by rokhayakebe ↗ HN
I found myself running the same search across multiples sites, so I made it easy for myself to type once and search in several places.

You can also try http://walabok.com/new .

25 comments

[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 61.6 ms ] thread
tyrelb
Rather than just another search tool, why not add some basic "AI" into the mix:

eg: searching "restaurant near Vancouver, BC" would use Yelp, "Facebook" would use google, and so on.

tyrelb
in other words, your search aggregator should auto-detect the context which the user is searching, then use the best platform to perform that search.
jparicka
How would you approach this problem? No need to be technical.. I'm curious as I'm working on something similar past 2 years or so.. Thanks
roundsquare
Maybe you can find a way to rank the individual search results. Some kind of text search, and compare these results. Then, whichever site search engines results gets the highest score can be displayed first.

Or, you can return individual results from different search engines on the same page.

tyrelb
Not exactly sure - but you could have datasets of key words and if those words match then you choose the search engine. And maybe there's some learning over time...
rokhayakebe
That is a very interesting approach. I believe Searchme did something similar.
dylanz
It didn't return any results, regardless of what I entered :)
icey
Same here: IE8 on XP, FF 3.5.7 on XP, FF 3.5.7 OSX and Safari 4.0.4 OSX

Edit: Ohhhhhh I get it now; you have to enter your search term, hit the search button, and then select which portal you want to search through.

I think the interaction needs some work, but I do like the paging between the search engines. I'm not sure if I would want to do that a lot, but it is kind of novel (to me at least).

m0th87
You have to click one of the links below the search box after you run a query. The fact that people are confused means that is certainly a usability issue though.
carbocation
It might be nice for the search to default to a (random?) one of those 5 search engines. Then, depending on where you plan on taking this, it might also be nice to see the names of all 5 in the brown strip running across the top of the page so I can immediately choose which one I want results from.

In this way, I would get my results immediately (basically a necessity due to user expectation), but I would still be able to quickly choose among the other options after seeing the initial search results.

ismarc
I'd actually suggest showing the top result for each search engine with an AJAX "show more results from X". Maybe top 2-3 results.
rokhayakebe
Yes, that is the big non starter I guess. You need to click on a link after submitting a search, then you can easily navigate between other vertical search engines.
andrewljohnson
It's an interesting experiment, but there are a lot of search aggregators out there, and they aren't very useful or profitable. If this is a business idea, I urge you to look elsewhere. If this is an exercise in programming, bravo.

Definitely have it display some results after I search though - the search paradigm is enter text, click go, get results. You just can't break that by adding another click, or you'll confuse everyone.

rokhayakebe
Thanks for the feedback. You are right about the extra click. I will try to do something about that.

I am a marketer and several times per day when I search, I try several places. So I decided to combine them, then share it with others. So there are no goals other than sharing it, which is why I did not "dare" asking "Review my Startup", but "my tool".

jasonwilk
This reminds me of the original Mahalo. We know how that turned out.
coffeemug
Interesting work. It's not quite useful to me just yet, but I think there is something there. The biggest problem I see so far is the fact that I need to click on a link after hitting search in order to get any results is a big problem. This needs to be fixed first.

I'm not completely sure what your direction is. If I search for something my goal is to either A) find the best results, or B) explore. You do somewhat of a mix of these two, but don't do either of these things well. I think you need to figure out what exactly is the utility for your users that you're providing, and then polish it until it's perfect. Going through all sources in a frame easily is kind of interesting, but it's not quite the utility I'm ever looking for. Perhaps merge the results somehow? Or let people explore (similar to Scoopler)?

The search space today is different from what it was two years ago. If you consider purely quality of the web results, Google isn't a clear winner. While I wouldn't try something new two years ago (Google was perfect), I would now. If someone built something that genuinely gave me better results, or indexed more stuff, or let me browse content in some great way, or something, I'd use it over Google. I'd imagine other people would too. What I mean is - I don't know what the answer is, but I know it's there, waiting to be discovered. What you've done is unpolished and isn't very useful, but somewhat interesting, so the person who'll discover the answer might as well be you! I'd keep trying, and keep asking for feedback. I'd love to see this go in a good direction.

Good luck!

rokhayakebe
Thanks for the detailed feedback. You are right about the extra click, I will try to load at least of page then let users navigate.

I think I will keep adding vertical search engines and improve the UX.

jparicka
I think it's a great idea. Kudos for putting it together. Good luck!
jparicka
PS - I didn't even know there are so many services out there!
rokhayakebe
Thank you. Yes, there are lots of verticals, and depending on what you search for there are usually better than the general search engines.
olalonde
You should preload the 1-2 next pages (i.e. using an hidden iframe).
rincewind
could you add duckduckgo please?