IceRocket: New Search Engine
IceRocket is a search engine that aims to put “the interests and wants of consumers before advertisers.” Upon reading that, I could not help but think that was a slam on Google. However, since they offer sponsored search results themselves, I am not quite sure how to take that statement.
IceRocket is powered by the following search engines: “WiseNut, Yahoo, MSN, Teoma, Altavista, Alltheweb, Lycos, and many more.” Again, notice the absence of Google. However, there are features of IceRocket which mimic Google.
Besides their implicit stand against the search engine giant, IceRocket does have a lot to offer.
Search results return a small snapshot of the web site, web site URL and a one to two sentence description. Two additional links are included with each result set: an archives link and a quick view link. The archives link takes the user to the archived pages of the web site as found on web.archive.org. Quick View opens up a frame within the search result set itself that displays the front page of the web site. This is a cool feature. It allows users to see the site without having to open another browser window. Each result set can be emailed or set up as an RSS feed. The feed returns the top ten results for a given keyword phrase.
Web search also offers advanced searching and the ability to set a variety of search preferences. IceRocket also keeps a record of search history. This, of course, is a bane or a boom depending on your perspective. History is kept from the following types of searches: Web, News, Images, Blogs, Friends. Search history can be turned off via preferences.
Searching Blogs is similar to searching the Web, though the search results are a little different. Results are ordered by the date and timestamp of the post, with the most recent posts listed first. Each result set includes the blog post URL, a two sentence description, a URL to the main page of the blog itself and the date the blog article was posted. Search terms are bolded within the description.
Next to the blog URL is a “Report as Spam” link. I am not quite sure how one could tell if the result returned was actually spam. Clicking on the link AUTOMATICALLY reports the link as spam. There is no confirmation whatsoever. This feature is subject to abuse. What happens when a result set is reported as Spam? Is it removed from the results page? Is the owner emailed? Why is there no confirmation like “Are you sure you want to report this result as spam”? UPDATE: From an email from IceRocket:
I wanted to explain the ” report as spam” link. As you probably know there are tons of spam blogs out there and unfortunately our crawlers find a lot of them. If a user reports a blog as spam it is NOT taken from our index but is put into a folder that I review each evening. If I look at it and see that it in fact spam, it is removed. I hope that clears things up.
There are four other links associated with each result. “Focus” will return all posts from that particular blog. “Exclude” will eliminate all posts from that blog from the current result set. “Subscribe” is a link to the blog’s feed. The author of each blog post is also hyperlinked. Clicking on the author’s name will return all posts created by that author. All these capabilities create a powerful blog search toolset.
Returning results by date posted is useful, but does not necessarily produce relevant results. All search engine searches are subject to this criticism. However, with blog search results the problem is exacerbated. For example, if I search for “fishing”, the results returned include recent posts that used the word “fishing”. This could include results from personal blogs that made comments like “He was fishing for an answer.” The latter is not very relevant. The only way for blog posts to have any relevancy is to make sure they are included as part of the traditional web search engine. Blog search results can be refined down to Today Only, Past Week or Past Month. This timeframe can also be customized.
For some reason, blog search results cannot be emailed like the web search results. However, a RSS feed of the first ten results can be created.
A Trend Graph can be created for any blog keyword search. This is an interesting tool. The Trend Graph shows how often the keyword has been cited in blogs over the last 60 days. It also returns an average posts/day and total number of posts within the 60 day timeframe. For example, George Bush has appeared in 60,774 posts over the last two months. An average of 996.30 posts per day. Appearing in .14% of all blogs. Posts spiked around May 6th or 7th. I wonder what George did that day?
There is also a place to add a blog to the search engine. It is a very simple form. One line actually. Enter the URL for a blog and click enter. If the blog is already crawled by Yahoo or MSN, chances are it is already included.
News Search is similar to Google News (gasp!). The default page displays Top News Stories. There is also a Business, Technology, Health and Sports section. These pages display the news in a fashion similar to Google News Text Format. Searching the News produces search results similar to a regular web search. News results can also be sorted by date or relevance. Hey! Why not the same feature for Blog search???
Phone Pic search: welcome to the world of Moblogging. The default page displays the last 20 pictures posted to the textamerica.com moblogging site. What is moblogging? Mobile Blogging. Specifically, blogging pictures taken with a mobile phone. Typically these are pictures of the camera user’s friends or family. Though you will also see pictures from the usual voyeur or exhibitionist. So parents beware. The search functionality is based on the name of the photograph. Unfortunately, it finds all images which simply contain a form of the keyword. For example, searching for “son” returns pictures with labels that include the words season, watson, samson ,crimson, etc.
Image search works just like the Phone Pics search. The difference being that it returns images that are part of websites. This is similar to Google or A9’s image search.
Multimedia search returns items categorized by various audio or video categories. Categories include: Artists, Albums, Songs, Audiobooks, Movies, Music Videos, TV Shows.
Find a Friend search is a dating service. The service is offered by Mingles.com. Here’s a side note: dating services could very well offer RSS feeds of potential dates to their subscribers. But thats an idea for a separate post.
Other IceRocket tools:
IceRocket includes an RSS Builder. Note, that this does not offer the capability to aggregate multiple feeds into one feed (like Feedster’s Feedpapers). This tool is for websites that do not have an RSS feed or who have static content and wish to publish a feed. More on this in a separate post.
IceRocket offers their own free toolbar. It is similar to most other toolbars on the market.
Icespy is a cool little tool, if limited. It displays past IceRocket searches. This is presented in a scrolling list format. However there are no statistics included. There is no search capability or sorting or anything. No details as to how many times the terms were searched.
Email a search is a great feature for PDA and mobile phone users. Email IceRocket with search terms. IceRocket responds with an email including the search results. Though the limitation is viewing those results on a PDA.
What is cool about IceRocket?
Quick View
Feature Rich Blog Search
RSS Builder
Email Search for PDA
What can be improved in IceRocket?
Report as Spam functionality can be abused
Unable to search blogs by date OR relevance
