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The emphasis on personalisation is much heavier than before.
I think this is a new update. I'm wearing my flame proof suit in case I'm wrong - I only noticed when my A9 toolbar seemed to change. My A9 notes, stored on a web page by web page bias and in the toolbar, also seem to have gone!
The search still uses Google, as far as I can see, but image results are thrown in at the expense of... oddly, the old book matches!
In Opera the "bookmarks" label on the button is larger than than the button itself, causing the S to run off the side.
The new site, which builds on a beta test version that began earlier this year, helps users discover information from several different sources, makes it easy to manage and organize their search results, and remembers what they have done in the past.A9.com offers users search results from five powerful information sources, which are presented through convenient selectable and adjustable columns: Web and image search provided by Google, book text of more than 100,000 titles from Amazon.com’s Search Inside The Book™, movie information from the Internet Movie Database, and reference information (encyclopedia, dictionary, etc.) through GuruNet.com. Additionally, A9.com is a search engine with a memory as it returns results from the user’s information, so with every search, users will see results from their own history, bookmarks, and diary.
[edited by: Brett_Tabke at 2:39 pm (utc) on Sep. 15, 2004]
[edit reason] added link to ans snippet of press release. [/edit]
Use A9 to search - and it saves a list of your search results in the toolbar. Then you can page through the actual web pages by pressing left or right buttons on the toolbar. It's much better than jumping back and forth between results and sites or opening every result site in a new window.
IMO if quality of search there is no different than Google, then I see little reason to use them.
If Amazon.com and co start to push A9 then you'll find more and more punters on A9. If Amazon start accepting their own PPC for A9 then, I think, in a single leap, it's above Espotting/FindWhat and into third place.
If A9 build and use their own index then 2006/2007 will be MSN/Amazon/Yahoo/Google.
Look how easy A9 is to use. Just the quick URL feature alone makes the point of entry for it easier than most. I think it's missing the point to say, "Meh, it's just Google". It Google while Google works for it; while it brand builds, tests the waters and attracts users (users who'll like the Google smarts and the A9 interface).
We had this same discussion back in April [webmasterworld.com] when A9 first went into public beta. I wrote about some of the implications in Msg. #9 in that thread, but that also led to a bunch of "who cares?" Guess people still aren't getting it, but I think they will at some point.
Saving all my past searches? Reminding which sites I clicked on? Thank you.
Yeah great, if it catches up then Google itself will replicate it and most likely gets it better. The point is that A9 appears to serve same stuff but differently, if they were Dell reselling exactly the same notebooks (laptops) made in Taiwan then you'd go for brand name and support, but what is A9 brand wise comparing to Google?
IMO they chosen the easy way - get meta seaching and stuff something shiny, yet useful on top. I will give it up for a search engine with better quality searches over bigger url space.
A9.com uses your Amazon.com account to identify you and shares information with Amazon.com...
The only apparent loss is the bookmarks, diary, and "this search brought to you by the color blue."
Hmm, took me five minutes to figure out that you have to drag the search result to the "bookmark" button not the "bookmark" column. Other than that, the usability of this thing is refreshing. Of course, it probably helps I have a wide monitor. Could a 15-inch monitor even show two columns?
This is the best new feature in a search engine since Teoma's search refinement suggestions.
It's interesting to watch all these sites that improve on Google with features like this. You've got the ones that add thumbnail images to your Google results, you've got ones adding the PR bar to your Google results, A9 adding search history to your Google searches.
It'll be interesting to see if Google considers these as improvements and adopts them at Google.com, or if they choose to stick with the tried-and-true vanilla approach that has been so successful to date.
There are definitely mistakes made in moderate filtering. They really ought to add the status indicator for what level Safesearch is set to in the images column. (Like Google does on the top of every image search page.)
/or relabel the site as A9NSFW.com ;)
Well - adult content filtering is broken - if you go to advanced and choose the radio button, it selects both - and produces the same results.
If someone searches for "huge $porn-widgets", that's fine, as far as I am concerned.
But I am mostly referring to about relatively innocent phrases related to ethinicity and sexual persuasion.
There are images that just shouldn't be there.
(You may need to be logged in to amazon for the link to work.)
since you've been using A9.com recently, virtually everything at Amazon.com is automatically an additional pi/2% (1.57%) off for you...The search engines are making a significant amount of money every time someone clicks on one of those ads. With our automatic pi/2% discount, we are effectively sharing with you some of the money we collect from sponsored links, i.e. sharing the pi.
It will be fascinating to see how the folks here at WebmasterWorld decide to optimize for A9 (if it takes off- and it has a great chance of taking off via word-of-mouth the way Google originally did).
I can't see what the fuss is all about, it's a clever idea but incredibly easy to replicate (from a programming perspective) and I can see Google, Yahoo etc modifying their site to offer the exact same feature.
-stage in buying cycle
-previous searches
-past purchases
-demographic
That will help unlock a huge amount of additional, latent buying intent in search and raise the fortune for smart ppc advertisers and the SE's they buy on.