Today’s Wall Street Journal has an article by Katherine Boehret in which she reports on her test of “two free tools that attempt to make your Web searches more relevant by learning from users’ reactions to search results: Google’s SearchWiki and Surf Canyon Inc.’s namesake tool . . . “
It’s on page D6, on the “Gadgets” page in The Mossberg Solution feature, edited by Walter S. Mossberg:
“Web Searches That Really Bear Fruit
New Free Tools Aim to Make Online Results More Relevant by Tracking Your Reactions.”
By Katherine Boehret
Google’s SearchWiki lets users promote or remove search results; Surf Canyon uses bull’s-eyes to denote related links based on users’ search patterns.
The author’s conclusion:
Google’s SearchWiki is asking users to do extra work, which may not be practical for many users. But if you do use it, this tool’s personalized, saved results could be a real boon. Surf Canyon worked well for me with multiple surf engines, retrieving data from result pages I likely wouldn’t have opened. Either way, your days of futile Web searching are numbered.
