Web Hosting Talk : Other Forums : Web Hosting Lounge : Future of Metasearch and Directories

[web2k6]

I've been reading some articles about search engines. "1.0 - 4.0"

It appears the future of search engines google, yahoo, etc are going to mix results from vertical searches (news, video, photo, etc) on each screen.

People are too lazy to click categories?!

Although not really revolutionary, this mixing (or if I remember correctly google will call it universal search) will probably be cluttered on screen instead of nice simple search results.

Anyway this got me thinking about metasearch. Is there a future for metasearch sites? If each major search engine is going to have universal search, how can a metasearch exist? Mixing results from various sources that already mix results?

Then comes to mind the directories. You know the web directories that are human edited like ODP, yahoo. Some have built in search spiders. Nice interface but differs from web results. I think I read somewhere that directories are going to die off.

So without metasearch and directories, what's left? The major search engines. Does this mean other small independent search engines will be launched? Can't imagine how they will compete, unless some genius comes up with an algorithm that reads your mind and shows precise results.

I would like to hear what you guys think about the future of metasearch sites and web directories. Or search in general.

[RajanUrs]

The ultimate search engine will be the one which allows the user to customize it to give the results in any format the user prefers.

Directories will continue to exist but with more enhanced features that will help the search engines to dig out the data. For example a directory entry input field will request for keywords and then auto suggest categories based on the keywords given by the user. So the end result will be a keyword rich directory which can be searched and it can also be browsed by selecting specific categories.

It is not science fiction. Check out google base

http://www.google.com/base/s2?a_n0=v...=9&hl=en&gl=US

Also try the post an item link at top right [you'll need a google account]