martinibuster - 7:37 am on Sep 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

Here's something that's cool. I noticed they had an outdated snapshot of one of my sites that has been redesigned awhile ago. So I emailed them and received a response the next day. Checked their engine tonight and it was updated.

How's that for cool?

The results aren't perfect, but browsing the snapshots is a useful way to explore the web or find what you want. This is one of the coolest things to happen in search technology since Google.

Room for improvement? Oh yeah. A non-intrusive way to report a crappy result would be useful on several levels. When a bad page carousels in front of a user, a little hot-or-not popup/button/choice available from the page would be cool. You can vote out a page without leaving the SERPs and without disturbing the browsing experience.

The user experience is important. Providing good results and an easy way to participate in creating that positive user experience is good. At the very least you don't show that site for that user. Going macro you can use that data to fine tune the algo, make the user complicit in the results and thus feed the sense of community and sense of ownership that comes with being a part of a community.