Thank you for the feedback. There is a peek of more content to indicate it is swipe-able to see more. Kind of like websites do with images, like Netflix for example.
Do you think if it was 100%, then people would still understand they could swipe?
Your site is simple to use. This is good. It also means that users won't need much help before they are proficient. But by reducing the screen width, you're punishing your users forever. You can solve this by teaching users about the interaction up front. Try placing some text somewhere on the screen that encourages users to swipe. You can hide it once they've done it once. Alternatively, shortly after page load you can animate the page to peek the next column of content. It will require a little playing around so that the instruction is clear but unobtrusive.
What phone are you using right now? That would be helpful for me to consider. I did increase the column width from 320 to 335 pixels based on your feedback. It does feel better. But if I make it too wide, then the content can get too big I feel.
I'll be thinking more about this feedback and will test some more. Thank you!
Just for an extra data point, I really like it the way it is. Seeing a peek of the next column to give an intuitive understanding that you can swipe for more is really neat (and I'm on an iPhone 8, so not a particularly large screen).
I found the sideswiping way too sensitive on mobile: when I just want to swipe right once I go through two maybe three pages. To scroll right just once I need to make a concerted effort to swipe just the right amount.
Scrolling to the next section works well but scrolling to a previous one feels too sticky now (requires too long of a swipe to the right for me at least).
What a great project, I'm really enjoying it. Well done!
Thank you for point that out! That could be helpful. Do you think I should implement that? Right now I still use the browser gestures too. I'm just getting better swiping inside vs swiping on the screen edge I guess...
Neat. Search UX is at the same time extremely difficult and criminally under-explored I feel. I realize this is hard with third party data, but something I'm really interested in presenting the relationships between data, and offering means of exploring them.
One gripe with this design is that this page can't be scrolled on a PC. Or rather, it can only be scrolled vertically. To scroll horizontally, you need to grab an auto-vanishing single-pixel scroll bar. Although that's not really your fault as much as the browser designers' fixation with minimalist GUIs.
I also think it's difficult to have these many images in an interface, especially brightly colorful images of vastly different sizes with faces. They are all powerful attention attractors, and as a result, and the result is the (excellent) structure of the website doesn't quite come to flourish as much as it could.
But as I said, search UX is extremely difficult. This is a cool new take.
Thank you for the detailed feedback marginalia_nu!
Yes I agree search UX has not been evolving much. I wish it would.
What version of Windows and what browser are you using? How old is the computer? Maybe it is something I could improve. I was figuring most modern computers can scroll horizontally well, but that isn't always the case. But I guess I am trying to push the design into the future...
I think on the desktop the columns could be wider, so the preview text wraps on fewer lines and more results fit in vertically for quick eye scanning.
Did you think about having the ability to display multiple primary search engines besides Google like DuckDuckGo? A while ago I switched to DDG as my default search engine and learned to trust that the search results are good enough. On occasion, I have a FOMO and fall back to Google anyway. It would be a neat feature to have them shown side-by-side.
Another example is Brave Search. I like the ideas behind it, but will not experiment with it as a default engine as an early adopter due to possible friction. With a meta engine like Swurl I could keep having Google/DDG as the primary engine and include other emerging engines like Brave Search in another column to take it for a low friction/risk test drive (perhaps configured through URL parameters).
I would love to have a different search source, but DuckDuckGo and Brave don't give API access to their results. I would definitely add those if they opened up access to Swurl. Know anyone that could help me with that?
I was so excited I didn't think it through :) This is where wishes meet hard reality. I believe DDG has its own crawler. But they also rely on results from Bing for which they probably don't have rights to provide an API.
So at this point the only viable alternative would seem to be the Bing API.
Just added Bing, you can switch to it from the menu on the top right to enable Bing instead of Google. Please try it out and let me know if that helps you.
I really like this. I've been working on my own personal search engine and might use a ux like this now. Question, how are you detecting whether the results are twitter posts/users and not random twitter pages (like the twitter career page for instance)? Also have you considered adding options to create this type of view for any page that has meta tags for title/desc/image and a logo?
jawerty, thank you for the encouragement! I appreciate it. Yes if you could use this UX somewhere that could be cool. It is kind of a new idea for website UX. It would be cool for a music player.
For Twitter, I'm just using a simple url check pattern for now to trigger it. It isn't perfect, but works well enough for now: /^https:\/\/[a-z\.]*twitter\.com\/[^\/]+$/i
Yes there are thoughts for even more column types like github, or imdb. But often the meta isn't that great, or there is no API, or no good embeds. Seems like websites are more closed off now vs in the 2000-2010s.
Thanks for your response. Also that's cool you're probably right about meta tags open graph is broadly used but not uniform in their content. As for additional sites Stackoverflow and quora would be great additions.
Thank you for the feedback! Stackoverflow is already there, but it needs to be triggered by google results. For example https://swurl.com/?q=php+array+sort will show stackoverflow. I'll look into Quora.
I like this quite a bit. I'd consider using something like this if only because it doesn't have ads at the top (it's a low bar).
Some comments:
- it seems like the order of the columns is not consistent across searches?
- I'm on the laptop and the columns extend past the edge vertically - I can scroll but it's not ideal. I expect this isn't a problem on a bigger screen.
- personally I don't care much for the Amazon and Instagram streams, although that might depend on the user. It certainly depends on what the search target is (any way to figure out if there's a near-perfect match with an Amazon product?)
- In general I think I'd like to see Wikipedia results first, but again, depends on what kind of search it is.
- (on laptop at least) it felt a little bit too dense, IMO, but I like pretty minimalist UIs.
Thank you for the detailed feedback pschuegr! Awesome you like it.
Would you prefer the columns to be consistent, vs dynamic based on search? Google web results are always first.
The order of the columns is based on the Google result ranking. The Google results usually trigger the column ranking generally. For example Wikipedia will only show if Google returns Wikipedia in the first 10 results. Same with pushing Instagram order up. So it is trying to show you relevant columns depending on the search. It is only as good as Google is at it.
What is the resolution of your laptop? I can test it to try to see what you see.
Yes it could feel too dense. It is a tradeoff. I could make it more minimal, but less info will show. I'm trying to make it as consistent/uniform/hierarchical as possible to make it feel less busy. It is very different, I am hoping people could get use to it and then like it better... but I may be wrong there.
Thank you. That is super big. I did push Wikipedia to be more in front when it is relevant. Also I did increase the column width a good amount yesterday after everyone's feedback. I tried widening it even more, but then the images felt too big and less columns are shown. I think it is a pretty good balance right now. Please try it out more now and let me know if you get used to it.
I've been using this pretty heavily for the last couple of days and I am liking it with the exception of one issue which is becoming a deal-breaker for me: it defaults to opening a new tab, which means that back isn't useful. I could always close the tab, but I have that burned into my muscle memory. Since the shortcut for opening a new tab is also an easy one for most people (cmd-click) it seems unnecessary to force it, IMO. Your call, though :)
I just added a setting to disable "Open in a new tab". Disable it from the drop down menu on the right of the search input, and let me know if that works well for you now?
Ok based on your feedback I changed it so Wikipedia is grounded as the 2nd column more, should help with preference and making it feel more consistent. Let me know if it feels better for you now.
Wikipedia will still need to be 1 of the first 10 Google results to trigger the Wikipedia column though.
I just made the columns a bit wider based on another person's feedback, so it should feel a bit less dense and readable for you now. I hope that helps.
Just added option to disable Instagram and Twitter from ▼ menu on the right of the search input. Let me know if that works good for you! I will think of adding others like Amazon.
I didn't notice this before, but the little circles on the upper left to help you navigate are great, are there keyboard shortcuts for them by any chance?
The dynamic columns based on search are cool. Not sure if you are learning from clicks, but that would be cool.
Tradeview price data is cool, not sure if intentional or a nice side effect.
Twitter results seemed to not be working, but I see they are there
Yes clicks would be cool. I could add that later if Swurl gets more click data.
Tradeview, you mean the stock price chart? Yes that is a widget we added.
Twitter results is actually done with a Twitter embed. Maybe you have some iframe blocking thing turned on? What browser are you using? It should work.
Ok I checked it out more. It is getting blocked due to tracking protection. So for Twitter and Instagram, the only way to integrate it well and easily is with embeds/widgets. It is iframed in with some JS code.
So really there isn't a way to fix it and make it work unless you don't use private mode in FF or unblock it.
But if you don't want to do that, I did add a way to disable Twitter and Instagram from the top right menu dropdown. Try it out and let me know if that solves your problem well.
This is fantastic! Would be nice if other things could be added, e.g. Google shopping and so on. But I will try it for a week and see what I think of it.
Obvious question about Google (and the others I guess): are you in breach of their Terms? How are you scraping results? How can you require people using this that it will continue to exist, or is it a proof of concept?
Personally I'm not a fan of endless scrolling. I never know if I've reached the end. It's also somewhat of a "dark pattern" to encourage attention.
Finally, on one search, the Instagram column contained 100% broken elements, they were the browser's default error message. My connection may have failed or something. Anyway, there was no option to refresh just that column, or individual broken elements.
Looks good though, nice UX overall.
Off topic: anyone else remember when dogpile was the new hotness? :)
I understand infinite scroll isn't for everyone. I will add a pagination option later. We have been using and optimizing infinite scroll on my other website picclick.com for many years. People usually like it if implemented well. I understand it isn't for you though, that is valid.
Yes Instagram is done by an instagram embed, and sometimes Instagram blocks aggressively. What browser are you using. I could test it some and try to figure out why it isn't working for you. Is your browser blocking Instagram embeds?
Great to hear that you think the UX is good. It is pretty different, so I am really wanting to know if people find it comfortable and understandable. The idea is in the future the amount of different columns and content in the columns would get better and support more search types. We do have reddit, stackoverflow, and others right now. But we could add a bunch more in the future for shopping, travel, coding.
I know, Kagi did a great job with getting people to pay for their value. I saw that and was impressed! I mean I would rather people pay and have no ads. I really don't like ads.
lol, yep that is what I'm paying for your queries right now :) Would love to lower that cost. I'm just happy people are liking it right now. I could do subscription or ads in the future or try to find a free search source. What do people think?
sk55, I'm so glad the UX works for you! That was the big question if the different design would be intuitive for people.
I am hoping the swipe to see more columns of searches will open up a whole new direction allowing more specific searches to be seen quickly. You could just swipe between different modalities. And possibly jump to narrower ones like just looking at reddit or stackoverflow, or php documentation (need to add that later).
Are you reranking results with neural nets? I'd like to have a personalised filter + reranker that can sit on top of everything else.
We need to take back control of our feeds. I think the trifecta of user control is - filtering, ranking and UI. Any of them can be used by big corporations in shady ways. Your meta search engine is already a new UI and allowing multiple sources empowers users. But we need more than that, something like customisable neural reranking or recommender systems that serve the users, not the advertisers.
Hrmm, that is some deep feedback. I thought people are really into privacy right now. For personalization I'd need to add registration and profiling and controls you need to click. Would you be into that?
What types of searches are you into? Could you give me some examples to think about, that would be very helpful. Thank you!
Check out now Kagi does it. They give you privacy by not logging queries, but you have an account and pay them. You can tweak your results by creating rules to promote/demote/block different domains.
I’m not sure how I would want results re-ranked for me. Maybe some limited promotion of geographically nearby things?
I would agree to personalise my filters on your system. The purpose is to stop the flood of junk and spam, to evade the agenda of whoever ranks the feeds.
I am already using such a system for scientific papers search.zeta-alpha.com, they do embedding based ranking and recommendations based on bookmarks and tags. It's 2022, I expect high end neural ranking. I even implemented such systems on my own, I know exactly how hard it is.
For example I searched on your site "Focal Loss", and I get news about "Former Longhorn Poona Ford Shines in Win over Arizona Cardinals". Search "Softmax Activation" and get "How to activate an eSIM on your iPhone". An embedding similarity filter would have rejected that, it's not even in the same ballpark.
Seems like a great UX to get broad information about a topic!
One little thing: In my opinion the labels 'Google', 'Wikipedia', 'Twitter', etc. don't need to be fixed on mobile since you already have to icons above it and it does take up a bit of vertical space.
Thank you conelion. I am super glad the UX feels great to you, and you are understanding the design advantage :)
That is a really good UX optimization find. Yes on mobile, since it is just 1 column at a time, I could remove the title label.
The label does help to anchor the column a bit more clearly and gives consistency between mobile-desktop. What do you think about that? Is the extra few pixels height more valuable? Really value your opinion!
I'll try coding it up tomorrow morning and see how it feels!
Just to be clear, I wouldn't remove the label on mobile entirely but just not make it fixed. In the sense of putting it inside the scroll container.
I only had time before to test it on mobile on my commute. Having seen the desktop version now I understand your concern. Maybe there is a way to just reduce the size of the information a bit but still keeping it structurally as is? I also think that most people can identify the source of the information just based on how it is structured (longer texts for wikipedia, youtube/twitter/reddit with its own branding, etc.) but we would need more opinions on that.
I’ve tried it on mobile and it works very well. Super smooth navigation, nothings lagging or moving in unintuitive ways.
But for me personally the preview of the next column takes up just a little too much space. Coupled with the fact that the active column has no white space on the left and is off center makes it feel a little cramped.
But I think this could be solved with a little tweaking. The overall layout looks and fells great.
I am using Kagi at the moment, but were I to use Google I’d definitely consider using this.
Great it is working good for you, that makes me very happy. Glad it is smooth and fast. I tried really hard to make it super fast and optimized and small.
Thank you very much for your spacing feedback. What device are you using to browse? I could try making the column a bit more wider and more spacing... It is a big tradeoff between information density and spacing.
Maybe give it a try for a week and let me know if you get use to it? It will take a bit of getting use to, because the density is not like most other search engines. For example Kagi only has 1 column and a bunch of empty space on both sides.
I will need to be thinking more about spacing... thank you!
I had a similar thought to the previous commenter. Perhaps the overflow hints could take up half of the current width, which would allow for a slightly wider first and last column. That, along with with a gradient overlaid on the sides with overflow available, fading from white at the screen edge to transparent, may provide the visual affordance you’re seeking, and the de-emphasis that seems appropriate.
I've used an iPhone 13 pro to try it out. I think just making the column on the right about half the width that it's right now would go a long way.
It's just there to show me that I can swipe to the right, not to actually be readable. Right now it takes up to much space as an indicator, but too little to convey information. I think that's what's bothering me.
I could probably get used to the main column being off-center pretty quickly, so it's really just the width of the right column.
This is great! If you're interested in search engine UX, I'd be interested in incorporating some of these ideas into https://mwmbl.org - would love to get your input - join us on Matrix https://matrix.to/#/#mwmbl:matrix.org
It is really impressive.
It's been hiding in plain sight yet not implemented that people want to search specific social media sites and we add reddit or twitter at the end of our search to get those results .
Ya for real! That is basically what this new UX is trying to enable. Just more columns of views.
I've been just seeing people swiping for more on snapchat and tiktok, thinking that UX design must be good to use for evolving something else. And hit upon trying it for search.
Let me know if you have other specific search columns I should add!
-- column for "unexpected" would be cool - "747 airplane" generated page I almost pictured before I hit enter - in a way that's good - however it would be fun to have a little more "weird" discovery thrown in there somehow --
Hrmmm, that is a great idea. I like it. Do you have an idea of a good source for that? Is there a website you like for discovering the unexpected? I guess maybe something like 9gag? https://9gag.com/search?query=747%20airplane
-- not sure about a complex solution however bet the GNOD guy would have an idea - he uses HN I think - https://www.twitter.com/marekgibney - less complex would be just grab a random result from each of the first 4 through 14 paginations of the google results? (it that makes sense?) --
You should add a cookie banner for EU users as you track users with google analytics without any consent. Also you should make it clear that the amazon results are ads and you earn money with your company with them.
Thank you. Otherwise great idea to have some horizontal view on different topics :) The idea behind that can probably also be applied to internal search results where you need to gain quick insights into multiple topics related to one keyword.
Yes the UX could be used for other search apps. Internal search is a good one, maybe searching a bunch different doc types or internal databases. Good point!
On mobile and I couldn't get it to do anything. Doesn't seem very intuitive.... You only get a few seconds of someones time when they first visit, it needs to be drop dead simple.
I see alot of other comments saying how easy and intuitive it is, so confused why I get nothing and can't figure out how to get something.
Thank you for letting me know about the back to top! I was able to reproduce it and fix the problem. Please try it again now and let me know if it works well for you now.
I made the columns a bit wider than before. I tried even wider, but when I did, it there is a line where it is too wide, especially on desktop. Where seeing more columns is better, or seeing more of a hint/peek is better. Please try using it some more regularly and let me know if you get use to it, or not :)
I think it would be good to be able to enable and disable this column (as well as the others since you prefer some column for some research and vice versa)
It just feels weird to have results from a walled off website on a search engine, unless we specifically indicate that we have an account on this website. Similar to how we don't like submissions to paywalled articles on HN.
Is that a philosophical question? I look at the picture, think "interesting" and move on. I don't use Instagram so you should probably ask someone who does what the intrinsic motivation for looking at Instagram photos is.
I don't know but I'm eager to find out when using this. So far it has been really interesting to get a glimpse into a walled garden I normally can't access.
For most of the other people in my life, they are primarily searching for products, books, people, and ideas for recipes or various projects around the home.
So I totally see the utility of having these social media sites in the feed.
On the other hand, this reduces privacy even more than stock google, basically broadcasting your search terms to a whole bunch of bad actors, so I won't be recommending it to anyone.
We have <meta name="referrer" content="origin"> in the header. So the search terms are not broadcast. I mean it is a bunch of tradeoffs. We lean more towards speed and low costs. DDG for example may be even more private, but it is slower and needs a bunch of ads to pay for the higher server costs.
Generally Swurl is super private compared to visiting 99% of all other websites out there. But please let me know if there is anything you think I should add/change to make it more private for you, without hurting speed and costs.
Love this, I think I will definitely add an option to disable! Thank you for your valuable feedback! I just woke up to go for a run, will code this in a couple hours when I get back...
Reminds me of the days before Google, when it was common practice to repeat the same search on a few search engines, and Apple released Sherlock [1], which allowed you to perform the same search across different engines and aggregated the results.
love it. If i could configure my google search UX to this something like this, I would. Reminds me of TweetDeck in its early days. This is a power tool for avid searchers.
Haha, yes exactly. That is one of the design inspirations. If people can handle columns of dense content on newspapers, figured they could on search too? I hope so.
On iPhone Safari, the bottom browser url bar + the top search input and tabs take up about 40% of the total vertical space of the screen. While usually the url bar collapses to while scrolling down, it doesn’t seem to happen here, probably since the scrolling element is nested.
Yes, sorry, that is a byproduct with this design, can't be fixed because of limitations on mobile browsers. What phone are you using? On most newer phones there is enough vertical height...
340 comments
[ 2508 ms ] story [ 2961 ms ] threadDo you think if it was 100%, then people would still understand they could swipe?
I'll be thinking more about this feedback and will test some more. Thank you!
https://swurl.com/?q=firefox
Scrolling to the next section works well but scrolling to a previous one feels too sticky now (requires too long of a swipe to the right for me at least).
What a great project, I'm really enjoying it. Well done!
Ok will test some more.
The problem is kinda Firefox actually. Swurl is using this newish css snap feature, but Firefox's implementation is a bit buggy. Sorry...
One gripe with this design is that this page can't be scrolled on a PC. Or rather, it can only be scrolled vertically. To scroll horizontally, you need to grab an auto-vanishing single-pixel scroll bar. Although that's not really your fault as much as the browser designers' fixation with minimalist GUIs.
I also think it's difficult to have these many images in an interface, especially brightly colorful images of vastly different sizes with faces. They are all powerful attention attractors, and as a result, and the result is the (excellent) structure of the website doesn't quite come to flourish as much as it could.
But as I said, search UX is extremely difficult. This is a cool new take.
Yes I agree search UX has not been evolving much. I wish it would.
What version of Windows and what browser are you using? How old is the computer? Maybe it is something I could improve. I was figuring most modern computers can scroll horizontally well, but that isn't always the case. But I guess I am trying to push the design into the future...
I think on the desktop the columns could be wider, so the preview text wraps on fewer lines and more results fit in vertically for quick eye scanning.
Did you think about having the ability to display multiple primary search engines besides Google like DuckDuckGo? A while ago I switched to DDG as my default search engine and learned to trust that the search results are good enough. On occasion, I have a FOMO and fall back to Google anyway. It would be a neat feature to have them shown side-by-side.
Another example is Brave Search. I like the ideas behind it, but will not experiment with it as a default engine as an early adopter due to possible friction. With a meta engine like Swurl I could keep having Google/DDG as the primary engine and include other emerging engines like Brave Search in another column to take it for a low friction/risk test drive (perhaps configured through URL parameters).
I would love to have a different search source, but DuckDuckGo and Brave don't give API access to their results. I would definitely add those if they opened up access to Swurl. Know anyone that could help me with that?
So at this point the only viable alternative would seem to be the Bing API.
For Twitter, I'm just using a simple url check pattern for now to trigger it. It isn't perfect, but works well enough for now: /^https:\/\/[a-z\.]*twitter\.com\/[^\/]+$/i
Yes there are thoughts for even more column types like github, or imdb. But often the meta isn't that great, or there is no API, or no good embeds. Seems like websites are more closed off now vs in the 2000-2010s.
I don't usually use Arxiv. Do you have some example queries where you would like to see a Arxiv column?
Also same with HN? That is a bit of a harder one. I guess I could trigger a HN column if there are tech news type results returned from Google.
Some comments:
- it seems like the order of the columns is not consistent across searches?
- I'm on the laptop and the columns extend past the edge vertically - I can scroll but it's not ideal. I expect this isn't a problem on a bigger screen.
- personally I don't care much for the Amazon and Instagram streams, although that might depend on the user. It certainly depends on what the search target is (any way to figure out if there's a near-perfect match with an Amazon product?)
- In general I think I'd like to see Wikipedia results first, but again, depends on what kind of search it is.
- (on laptop at least) it felt a little bit too dense, IMO, but I like pretty minimalist UIs.
Nice work!
Would you prefer the columns to be consistent, vs dynamic based on search? Google web results are always first.
The order of the columns is based on the Google result ranking. The Google results usually trigger the column ranking generally. For example Wikipedia will only show if Google returns Wikipedia in the first 10 results. Same with pushing Instagram order up. So it is trying to show you relevant columns depending on the search. It is only as good as Google is at it.
What is the resolution of your laptop? I can test it to try to see what you see.
Yes it could feel too dense. It is a tradeoff. I could make it more minimal, but less info will show. I'm trying to make it as consistent/uniform/hierarchical as possible to make it feel less busy. It is very different, I am hoping people could get use to it and then like it better... but I may be wrong there.
I've been using this pretty heavily for the last couple of days and I am liking it with the exception of one issue which is becoming a deal-breaker for me: it defaults to opening a new tab, which means that back isn't useful. I could always close the tab, but I have that burned into my muscle memory. Since the shortcut for opening a new tab is also an easy one for most people (cmd-click) it seems unnecessary to force it, IMO. Your call, though :)
Wikipedia will still need to be 1 of the first 10 Google results to trigger the Wikipedia column though.
The dynamic columns based on search are cool. Not sure if you are learning from clicks, but that would be cool. Tradeview price data is cool, not sure if intentional or a nice side effect. Twitter results seemed to not be working, but I see they are there
Thank you for the encouragement and feedback!
Yes clicks would be cool. I could add that later if Swurl gets more click data.
Tradeview, you mean the stock price chart? Yes that is a widget we added.
Twitter results is actually done with a Twitter embed. Maybe you have some iframe blocking thing turned on? What browser are you using? It should work.
So really there isn't a way to fix it and make it work unless you don't use private mode in FF or unblock it.
But if you don't want to do that, I did add a way to disable Twitter and Instagram from the top right menu dropdown. Try it out and let me know if that solves your problem well.
I don't think Google shopping has an open API, if it did, would love to add that. Right now we do have Amazon and eBay, and will try to add more.
Yes we do want to add more relevant columns from other websites. Let me know if there are specific ones that would really help your searches.
Awesome you will try it for a week. Would really value your feedback, and will try to code any changes you would like.
Obvious question about Google (and the others I guess): are you in breach of their Terms? How are you scraping results? How can you require people using this that it will continue to exist, or is it a proof of concept?
Personally I'm not a fan of endless scrolling. I never know if I've reached the end. It's also somewhat of a "dark pattern" to encourage attention.
Finally, on one search, the Instagram column contained 100% broken elements, they were the browser's default error message. My connection may have failed or something. Anyway, there was no option to refresh just that column, or individual broken elements.
Looks good though, nice UX overall.
Off topic: anyone else remember when dogpile was the new hotness? :)
I am using Google directly through their paid API, so it is official and legitimate. Not scraping. https://developers.google.com/custom-search/v1/overview
I understand infinite scroll isn't for everyone. I will add a pagination option later. We have been using and optimizing infinite scroll on my other website picclick.com for many years. People usually like it if implemented well. I understand it isn't for you though, that is valid.
Yes Instagram is done by an instagram embed, and sometimes Instagram blocks aggressively. What browser are you using. I could test it some and try to figure out why it isn't working for you. Is your browser blocking Instagram embeds?
Great to hear that you think the UX is good. It is pretty different, so I am really wanting to know if people find it comfortable and understandable. The idea is in the future the amount of different columns and content in the columns would get better and support more search types. We do have reddit, stackoverflow, and others right now. But we could add a bunch more in the future for shopping, travel, coding.
https://swurl.com/?q=dogpile
I remember dogpile and using it. I think I was more on Altavista at that time.
I am hoping the swipe to see more columns of searches will open up a whole new direction allowing more specific searches to be seen quickly. You could just swipe between different modalities. And possibly jump to narrower ones like just looking at reddit or stackoverflow, or php documentation (need to add that later).
We need to take back control of our feeds. I think the trifecta of user control is - filtering, ranking and UI. Any of them can be used by big corporations in shady ways. Your meta search engine is already a new UI and allowing multiple sources empowers users. But we need more than that, something like customisable neural reranking or recommender systems that serve the users, not the advertisers.
What types of searches are you into? Could you give me some examples to think about, that would be very helpful. Thank you!
I’m not sure how I would want results re-ranked for me. Maybe some limited promotion of geographically nearby things?
I am already using such a system for scientific papers search.zeta-alpha.com, they do embedding based ranking and recommendations based on bookmarks and tags. It's 2022, I expect high end neural ranking. I even implemented such systems on my own, I know exactly how hard it is.
For example I searched on your site "Focal Loss", and I get news about "Former Longhorn Poona Ford Shines in Win over Arizona Cardinals". Search "Softmax Activation" and get "How to activate an eSIM on your iPhone". An embedding similarity filter would have rejected that, it's not even in the same ballpark.
One little thing: In my opinion the labels 'Google', 'Wikipedia', 'Twitter', etc. don't need to be fixed on mobile since you already have to icons above it and it does take up a bit of vertical space.
Other than that a nice concept.
That is a really good UX optimization find. Yes on mobile, since it is just 1 column at a time, I could remove the title label.
The label does help to anchor the column a bit more clearly and gives consistency between mobile-desktop. What do you think about that? Is the extra few pixels height more valuable? Really value your opinion!
I'll try coding it up tomorrow morning and see how it feels!
I only had time before to test it on mobile on my commute. Having seen the desktop version now I understand your concern. Maybe there is a way to just reduce the size of the information a bit but still keeping it structurally as is? I also think that most people can identify the source of the information just based on how it is structured (longer texts for wikipedia, youtube/twitter/reddit with its own branding, etc.) but we would need more opinions on that.
Here are instructions on how to default it on Chrome https://swurl.com/default.html
Uncaught TypeError: data.queries is undefined web https://swurl.com/?q=google+translate:1179 jQuery 6
But no blocked requests.
If it still isn't working, could you let me know the exact URL you are looking at? And browser you are using?
// API callback webgoogle({ "error": { "code": 403, "message": "Requests from referer https://www.googleapis.com/ are blocked.", "errors": [ { "message": "Requests from referer https://www.googleapis.com/ are blocked.", "domain": "global", "reason": "forbidden" } ], "status": "PERMISSION_DENIED", "details": [ { "@type": "type.googleapis.com/google.rpc.ErrorInfo", "reason": "API_KEY_HTTP_REFERRER_BLOCKED", "domain": "googleapis.com", "metadata": { "service": "customsearch.googleapis.com", "consumer": "projects/blabla" } } ] } } );
But for me personally the preview of the next column takes up just a little too much space. Coupled with the fact that the active column has no white space on the left and is off center makes it feel a little cramped. But I think this could be solved with a little tweaking. The overall layout looks and fells great.
I am using Kagi at the moment, but were I to use Google I’d definitely consider using this.
Thank you very much for your spacing feedback. What device are you using to browse? I could try making the column a bit more wider and more spacing... It is a big tradeoff between information density and spacing.
Maybe give it a try for a week and let me know if you get use to it? It will take a bit of getting use to, because the density is not like most other search engines. For example Kagi only has 1 column and a bunch of empty space on both sides.
I will need to be thinking more about spacing... thank you!
I could probably get used to the main column being off-center pretty quickly, so it's really just the width of the right column.
Yes please incorporate any ideas you like.
I do think or hope search will eventually be free and everyone will have access to a good free search API.
I'll check out mwmlb deeply in the morning!
well done, very cool and am looking forward to Dark Mode!
For dark mode, are you wanting it automatic based on detection, or a setting?
I've been just seeing people swiping for more on snapchat and tiktok, thinking that UX design must be good to use for evolving something else. And hit upon trying it for search.
Let me know if you have other specific search columns I should add!
Edit: it’s over there on the right. I just missed it initially. Swank!
[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/16/technology/gen-z-tiktok-s...
Hrmmm, that is a great idea. I like it. Do you have an idea of a good source for that? Is there a website you like for discovering the unexpected? I guess maybe something like 9gag? https://9gag.com/search?query=747%20airplane
I just threw on GA so I can see some basic usage data.
Yes the UX could be used for other search apps. Internal search is a good one, maybe searching a bunch different doc types or internal databases. Good point!
I see alot of other comments saying how easy and intuitive it is, so confused why I get nothing and can't figure out how to get something.
What searches are you doing where it doesn't get anything? That would help me figure out what looks wrong, thank you for the feedback!
Notes:
The back to top button is covered by the URL bar on Firefox mobile.
Also next page/column preview is too wide imho
I made the columns a bit wider than before. I tried even wider, but when I did, it there is a line where it is too wide, especially on desktop. Where seeing more columns is better, or seeing more of a hint/peek is better. Please try using it some more regularly and let me know if you get use to it, or not :)
Are you using some incognito or private mode?
Thank you!
Keep the Instagram results. It's very useful.
What do you mean? The whole point is that I can search Instagram here without an account.
Why not let the user decide, which columns to show? You could start with a default, non-intrusive set which the user can expand as liked.
For most of the other people in my life, they are primarily searching for products, books, people, and ideas for recipes or various projects around the home.
So I totally see the utility of having these social media sites in the feed.
On the other hand, this reduces privacy even more than stock google, basically broadcasting your search terms to a whole bunch of bad actors, so I won't be recommending it to anyone.
Generally Swurl is super private compared to visiting 99% of all other websites out there. But please let me know if there is anything you think I should add/change to make it more private for you, without hurting speed and costs.
google.##.g:has(a[href="pinterest.com"])
add this to your ublock origin.
https://imgur.com/cu3u6EX
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sherlock_(software)
Swurl is using Google search right now... so you could just change your default search to Swurl :) Would love the support
Thank you for noticing and commenting that!