Why Search Is Changing. FAST.

Over the last several years, I’ve seen search engines come and go, left and right. Remember Cuil, Mahalo, Searchme, anyone?

There are reasons most people don’t use these.

• You have to go to their URL and search from there.
• They suck at giving decent results.
• They’re too slow or too niche-focused for most.

However, that’s not stopping people from getting the information they want.

HOW are they getting that information:

• RSS Feeds
• Twitter
• Facebook/ LinkedIN/FriendFeed
• Search API’s – such as Yahoo BOSS

What would have taken a good chunk of time to develop, even a year ago, can be created in less than 5 minutes with these user friendly API frameworks, such as this search aggregator one from Daylife.

[clearspring_widget title=”Custom News Index” wid=”475d6a29e8bccd89″ pid=”4915a32b717a81fa” width=”404″ height=”364″ domain=”widgets.clearspring.com”]

Or this one, I whipped out in just minutes as well.

christmas shopping widget

[clearspring_widget title=”Custom News Index (200px)” wid=”4767d42fdd174e67″ pid=”4915ab8479e37bed” width=”200″ height=”420″ domain=”widgets.clearspring.com”]

Now, I know this puppy isn’t perfect, but that’s not the point. When the non-techies are able to create custom search engines for themselves, search via the usual routes is bound to suffer. Do I know what the future holds for the big 3 (aside from Yahoo, which I think is in SERIOUS trouble)? nope. Will open access to source code and API’s start to be limited, or provided for a fee? Oh, man I hope not – but I guess we’ll have to wait and see!