This feature was originally mentioned here, but we decided to re-post it separately in our ‘New Features’ category.

Our #1 Feature Request – Tabbed Browsing

Lots of users wanted to open their chosen web site in a new window, without losing their search results, so we added it right away. Now you can keep your search results open while you visit other sites.

To turn this feature on, go to “Settings”, look for “Open links in:”, and click on “New window”. You can see it here:

NOTE: If your browser is set to open links in a new tab, then clicking on a link or right clicking and selecting ‘Open Link in New Window’ will open a new tab.

One of the cool things about going in to beta, is learning about how different people use Searchme in different ways. I never would have guessed that we would attract interest from the recruiting industry so early on.

Over at Broadcasting Online Recruitment News, there’s post about Searchme changing the game for recruiters

SearchMe is trying to innovate the interface end of search is a good thing, which may provoke similar innovations on job boards.

If you have an interesting way that you use Searchme, blog about it, and we’ll try to include it here!

It’s Friday, so here’s a little “moment of zen.” It’s a fan video from Direct Effect Live:

Enjoy!

This post was written by our Chief Spam Fighter and delves into the subject of why spam is such a tricky little beast. It was prompted by a question that a Searchme user posted at getsatisfaction.com.

Now that we know how spam fights, cheats and multiplies, let’s talk about why it’s a particularly tricky problem from the search engine side of things. Namely, we have to be really careful that we only remove spam and not the good sites.

Let’s drag out the stadium analogy one last time. We know the end zone’s full of spammers, but what if Baby Kylie and Aunt Millie happen to be sitting there as well? We obviously don’t want to get rid of them, so we can’t just blast the area.

At Searchme, we strive for a zero error rate - not one site mistakenly removed from our search results for being spam; not a single baby with the bathwater. While almost all other aspects of search are relatively mistake-tolerant and work well ‘on average’, identifying spam does not. ‘On average’ could mean that a search engine was wrong up to one-half of the time, and nobody can afford to be 50% wrong when it comes to identifying spam. So we have to look at every site very closely - no big sweeps.

Also, what if some of the hooligans look an awful lot like Aunt Millie? We have to be so cautious about not getting rid of what may be a good site that sometimes a spam site won’t be identified. (The good news is that since this is a two-way adversarial street, a site missed today will be found tomorrow.)

So, this is why you still find spam pages in search engines, despite our best efforts. Spammers use every dirty trick in the book, knowing that we, the search engines, have to be very careful in how we get rid of them.

The good news is, we won’t give up the fight.

This post was written by our Chief Spam Fighter and delves into the subject of why spam is such a tricky little beast. It was prompted by a question that a Searchme user posted at getsatisfaction.com.

In Spam Part One, I touched on the adversarial nature of spammers, how they cheat by yelling and shape-shifting. Now let’s discuss the second reason why spam is a particularly tricky problem: The numbers.

First of all, there is just so much darn spam out there. Billions and billions of pages. Dealing with the sheer mass of it is a never-ending, soul-wearying battle.

Second of all, spammers multiply like the devil. Say each person in our stadium represents one good site. Well, the spammers in the crowd have found a way to clone themselves, so what looks like a whole end zone full of people could in fact be one bad spammer. This cloning process is so fast and so cheap that even if we cleared out the area at half time, the area would be filled again by the third quarter.

Here’s an example to illustrate this point: We once found a spam site that led to 381 billion pages. One domain created a flood of spam pages that was more than ten times the size of Google’s index.

That’s the kind of enemy we’re dealing with.

Next time I’ll post about how hard it is to distinguish what is and is not spam (even though they’re everywhere.)

Tomorrow: Spam Part Three - Babies with the Bathwater

This post was written by our Chief Spam Fighter and delves into the subject of why spam is such a tricky little beast. It was prompted by a question that a Searchme user posted at getsatisfaction.com.

Academics refer to web-spam as ‘adversarial information retrieval’. Academic-speak is always amusing, but ‘adversarial’ does point to why web-spam is so hard to identify and so very different from all the other problems that search engines must address.

Why is web-spam such a tough one? Well, first of all, spammers are actively trying to game the search engine. Or in common parlance, cheat.

Here’s an analogy: Imagine the Web as a stadium full of of people. Each person represents a web site. You do a search by asking your query over the PA system, and the whole stadium responds. The search engine’s job is to distinguish the correct answer from the false ones in the din of voices.

Now imagine that the spammers have smuggled in bullhorns.

Obviously, they’re much louder than everyone else, so they’re going to rise above the noise.

Second of all, spammers learn as they go. As search engines get better and better at distinguishing them, spammers adapt. So at the very beginning, they just needed to shout. Then they smuggled in bullhorns. Now they have Bose™ directional sound cannons.

That’s why it’s so rare to find spam results using techniques from just a few years ago.

As you can see, not only is spam identification a difficult problem, but even when a search engine solves it, there’s a new version clamoring from the end zone by the next morning.

This is why, in the game of spammer v. search engine, it’s a never-ending, constantly-evolving war.

Next time, I’ll post about how spam is a mighty foe just by the sheer weight of its numbers.

Tomorrow: Spam Part Two - Attack of the Clones

As I alluded to in yesterday’s post, our beta testers are giving us tons of excellent feedback, including hundreds of feature suggestions. Thank you so much for all your great ideas!

I thought it would be fun to post the Top 5 most popular feature requests. Here they are, in Letterman order:

5. Image Search. Obviously a no-brainer for visual search, and we’re working on it. (Hint: We already download all those images anyway, right?!) And wouldn’t it be cool with photo communities? Stay tuned.

4. Magnifying Lens. This one caught me by surprise. Our images are big enough to display headlines, images and brands, but due to physical screen size and resolution, you just can’t read the text. (Yet!) So a lot of folks suggested that we create a magnifying lens that magnifies the pages. There are lots of ways this could implemented, but we want to keep it really simple. Let us know how you’d do it - leave us a comment!

3. Numbered Results. Visual search is truly a different paradigm, and we don’t have plans to number results as a default option. But so many people requested this feature that I think it would make a great option in our settings. I’m definitely passing this one on to our user experience team!

2. International. Planet Earth is hungry for Searchme! We’ve had gazillions of inquiries about when Searchme would be available in specific languages and nations. We are so flattered and so eager to bring Searchme to the world. We haven’t announced specifics, but we are definitely moving forward on several international initiatives. Hang in there, international users are very important to us!

1. Scroll Wheel/Trackpad Support. Man, you guys are speed demons, aren’t you? This was by far the biggest feature request that we haven’t implemented yet. We understand your need for speed: It’s super fun to watch those pages whiz by! So hang on, we’re working on it, and it will be cool. By the way, trackpad support sounds an awful lot like “touch”, doesn’t it?

Thanks so much for the ideas, and keep up the great feedback!

From the Blogosphere

Whenever we see an interesting blog post about us, we’ll post it here, in our “From the Blogosphere” section.

SearchMe Gets an “A” for Innovation, Even If That Innovation Was Obvious

Over at bigoak blog, Will Paoletto is more impressed with our categorization than our visual display of results. Personally, I like how we show results, but it warms my heart to see him looking under the hood at our category feature. Thanks for giving us some of your cycles, Will!

If you’ve got a blog, write about us - we may well post it here!

Thanks!

John

I’m John Holland, one of the Searchme founders. This is where I, along with other members of the team, will keep you up to date with what’s going on at Searchme, share some of the feedback we’ve received, and tell you about brand-new features. We’ll be posting a lot, so check back often.

THANK YOU!

First things first: Until we launched our private beta, Searchme was just a hypothesis, a glimmer in our eye. We hoped that some folks might appreciate visual search like we did, but it wasn’t until we put it in front of you, the users, that we could know for sure.

Well, we’re happy to say that since March 11th, nearly 100,000 users have asked to help us test Searchme. They’ve performed hundreds of thousands of queries and they’ve viewed millions of images. Our beta testers have banged on the engine and flipped through the pages and let us know what they think.

As you can imagine, after years of development, it’s really exciting to see people finally using Searchme, so first of all, we want to say THANK YOU!

YOUR FEEDBACK

The most exciting thing for me by far has been the thousands of feedback emails we’ve received from our users. I’ve personally read each and every one of them, and I am overwhelmed by how creative and forward-thinking Searchme users are. We’ve had testers who work in education, medicine, business, and scores of other disciplines, and they’re all using the search engine in very creative ways.

Here’s a sampling from our mailbag. I’ve just used people’s initials, in keeping with our extreme respect for our users’ privacy:

“I loved your site the minute I saw it on the tv the other day. It’s even better in person.” – D.

“What can I say? I have just registered and am totally amazed! This has to be the way forward for internet search engines of the future.” – K.

“I love your product. The visual display of web pages makes browsing fun again.” – M.

“This site is fabulous! Genius! … Searchme.com is my new search engine. ” – D.

Of course, as with any new product, it wasn’t all roses. We’ve just entered beta and we know we have a long way to go. But even the negative is helpful, because it tells us what we could do better and what our users want out of search.

We’ve received a lot of fantastic ideas for new features, and two of them stood out so much that we’ve already added them. And so, we give you…

YOUR FEEDBACK = 2 NEW FEATURES

Feature #1 – Tabbed Browsing

Lots of users wanted to open their chosen web site in a new window, without losing their search results, so we added it right away. Now you can keep your search results open while you visit other sites.

To turn this feature on, go to “Settings”, look for “Open links in:”, and click on “New window”. You can see it here:

Feature #2 – Scroll Arrows

Our scroll bar is really fun: Slide it back and forth and watch the pages whiz by! But a lot of users asked for more precise control over the pages, so we decided to add an arrow to either end of the scroll bar:

You’ve always been able to go forward or backward by clicking on an individual page, but now these simple, clickable arrows make the results even easier to navigate.

THANKS AGAIN

I want to wrap up by saying thank you once more to all of our beta testers. We appreciate you, and we’re learning so much from all your comments. And, of course, if you have any more feedback, we’d love to hear it.

Thanks!

John