Webby Thoughts

There is a lot of excitement about Web2.0 and everybody becoming content producers.  There are also a lot of worries about how much longer that excitement and growth will continue.

We still have quite a long way to go before we run out of content producers.

Just today, I was trying to figure out whether we can afford to have somebody clean the house for us a couple times a month.  A few of the big chain companies show up in Google with links to Google Maps.

But, what about all the people that work independently from any franchise?  I didn’t find any of them in the search engines.

I can use the phone book to get a better idea, but that still won’t include a lot of the independent people.

My dad just started a home inspection business after retiriing from his previous job.  He has started a little website with the help of an old co-worker but has no idea what to do with it besides putting the link on his business card.  Once he gets it set up the way he wants, I’ll try to help him get it to show up at the top of the search for home inspections in his area.
If people like my dad are starting to understand that every business needs a web presence, it will not be long before every parent babysitting out of their home and every kid mowing lawns will start wanting to create online content.

We will still be left with the old problem of having small local businesses compete with big national/international businesses but at least we will have a better chance of getting good information from local searches.

There are a few common ways to find new blogs.

1. Sidebar/blogroll links
2. Technorati or other blog search tool
3. Direct links to specific articles within blogs you read

I almost exclusively find blogs through the last method. With all the link exchanging for SEO that happens in sidebars and with all the noise in the search engines, the last one seems to be the only one where you have a fairly good chance of getting good content on the other side of the click.

Another tool I use to find new blogs is StumbleUpon. It is a toolbar that you add to your browser that lets you tell it what kinds of things you want to search for. Then when you hit the Stumble! button, it will take you to a page that other Stumble Upon users have flagged as belong to the category you are looking for.

In theory it is a pretty clever system and once you get through all the small business/home businesses that seem to dominate a lot of the searches that I do, you can find a lot of new, interesting perspectives. Plus, as you tag stories, you help make the search engine more accurate.

Technorati Tags: blogging, finding new blogs, google, search, StumbleUpon

Little things keep popping up on the internet that have the possibility of making the internet a much better community experience. I don’t mean things like Myspace and Facebook that have their own potential and drawbacks.

I mean little things like the Google Coop Custom Search Engine. This lets you use the Google search on your website and limit the sites you want Google to search when people enter their search phrase. Very niche. Very cool.

Then just a few minutes ago, a link from Scoble pointed me to this post on the Snipperoo blog. He used Scoble’s OPML to create a Google custom search box for all the feeds that Scoble subscribes to. That is a pretty good concept, but I think the list is static. So when Scoble adds or removes somebody,
the Snipperoo search box will be out of date.

Now if we could just get Google to let us use OPML as more of a dynamic pointer to a dynamic list to build the search engine filter, we would really be onto something.

Technorati Tags: google, search, search engines

I just read this pretty funny article on SI.com about the Buffalo Bills regretting not picking Jay Cutler in the NFL draft. The entire story is made up, but it has this quotation:

“Wow, I had no idea he was that good….I didn’t even know what school he
was from. Then I decided to Google him and found all this information
about how awesome he was in college. Huh. I guess I should have done
that before the draft. I also should have Googled Donte Whitner,
because apparently he isn’t very good.”

Googling is everywhere. When we need to find out what time the movie starts, we google. When we need to get the phone number to the pizza place, we google it. Google is pretty good at providing a lot of information.

It is not the only option, though. Google the Buffalo Bill’s Donte Whitner and you end up with mostly information about him as an NFL prospect.  A bunch of stats.

The last link on the first page (today at least) is a little different. It is a link to Donte Whitner information at www.topix.net. Click on that link and you get a whole bunch of interesting, current information about Donte Whitner.

Topix only looks at several thousand news sources instead of indexing everything on the internet. Putting that filter in place dramatically cuts down on all of the noise and can give much more relevant information. It seems to help bring out the stories of the people better.

That filter does come at a cost. Type your own name in. Unless you are a lot more famous than me, I’m going to bet it did not return any information about you. Put in your website. Probably the same result. The more filters in place, the more likely entire subsets of information are going to be lost.

Search engines are tools. Just like you have to look at the situation to know which kind of saw to use, you also need to make sure you use the right search engine for the information you want to find.

Google will remain my search engine of choice for any quick and dirty search.

Topix.net has recently become my search engine for when I want to dig a little deeper and actually do some research.  I have also been using the RSS feature of Topix.net to track topics that I am interested in watching.  The local news that I am regularly finding is amazing.  Mixed with the feeds for my topics I blog about and just like to read about, Topix.net is better than newspapers, magazines, and Google all mixed in one.

At least until I need to find out what time Menard’s closes.

Technorati Tags: search engines, google, topix