What do you think ? Do you think this approach is better than Google ?
When you do a Google search, before you scroll down there's a good chance your screen is mostly just filled up with ads. If this were to launch today, would you use it ? Like, seriously use it ? Sure, it's accessible. But there's a thick layer of commercial imperatives, quality judgments and assumptions that lie between you and the information that you get to see.
Leap.it results come up displayed on cards. For each search, it integrates social links, searching into Twitter streams, with real-time news and historical information. It's like Google, plus Google News, rolled in with a Twitter search. If you log in and create an account you can curate and share your own search 'perspectives' with others.
http://pando.com/2014/06/27/leap-it-thinks-that-a-visual-social-approach-to-search-can-unseat-google-from-its-throne/
(Score: 2) by Marneus68 on Sunday June 29 2014, @08:37AM
I absolutely hate this kind of wall of cards approach. Sure it's better use of my screen, but it's very unsettling to see these results all over the place.
In that department I think DuckDuckGo [duckduckgo.com] is doing it right. They have the right balance of visual and textual results to a query.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Horse With Stripes on Sunday June 29 2014, @09:02AM
It's a little odd, and it uses lazy loading (at least on my tablet) so there's a delay every time I scroll. The card approach in a UI is fine for limited options and/or 'flipping' for more information. When everything is a card it's a bit of a mess - especially when they are a variety of heights and look staggered.
The quality of search results, and the ordering, definitely needs improvement.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @09:25AM
I hate this kind of layout when I want to scan for information. It's the same with the facebook/google+ multi-column presentation: instead of following a linear sequence of objects, my eyes have to jump between columns and alternate between irregularly sized blocks.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by bradley13 on Sunday June 29 2014, @08:56AM
An example: Today I was looking for the homepage of a business. I didn't remember the name of the business, but I know what they do and the name of the small town they are in (where they are certainly the only business of this type). In DuckDuckGo, the business' homepage is the 23rd link (I didn't actually find it, because I stopped looking when I got to irrelevant links to Expedia and Facebook). Instead, I tried Google, where the business was the top link.
That is typical, in my experience. Sure, if you're looking for something obvious, even Bing may accidentally get it right. But if you actually need to search for something, using inexact or ambiguous keywords, Google produces by far the best results.
Until someone produces better, or at least competitive results, Google will remain dominant. It's really that simple...
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Sunday June 29 2014, @11:19AM
Agreed - Google works.
From the article, "before you scroll down there's a good chance your screen is mostly just filled up with ads". Seriously - anyone who has that problem needs to turn in his/her geek card. Google is my primary search engine. I don't see the ads.
Oh - well - yeah, if I fire up a LiveCD, or use someone else's computer, I'll see a virtual wall of advertising. But, on my computer, I don't see it. Good grief - I know that I can't be the ONLY person who knows how to configure a browser with addons and such!
Like any other tool, if you don't know how to use it, Google just might hurt you. If you know your tools, then you can make them behave the way YOU want.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @09:19AM
As clean as Google used to be, and as much as they talked about keeping the boundary clear between ads and "real" results, I have to say that as of late I'm having a harder and harder time figuring out if I'm looking at sponsored links/ads or not.
The colors have mostly gone. There now appear to sometimes be multiple sections of ads, etc etc.
Depending on the search, it sometimes looks that all old faithful returns is a page of ads...
I don't think VR is the answer, but the time for competition maybe be ripe
(Score: 2, Interesting) by acharax on Sunday June 29 2014, @04:59PM
The ads are the least problem, they're easy enough to overlook (or rather, block). No, it's the search results themselves that've changed in recent years, a couple of years back Google began reinterpretting search terms (they'll exchange your query for whatever the engine thinks you've "really" searched for, replacing random terms with synonyms etc., they're even doing this for phrases wrapped in quotes). The only way, as of yet, to prevent their search engine from reinterpretting a query is to use the somewhat hidden verbatim mode.
To me it's this change that has rendered Google useless for all but casual searches, unless I feel like toggling on verbatim mode each and every time I search for anything, they cleverly "forgot" to add an option to enable it by default, no doubt with the intent of removing it entirely in the future (with the old excuse that almost nobody was using it).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @12:51PM
the problem is that websites present information/data but don't think much about local "searchability".
instead they put a input-box for local search which just bothers the google search database actually.
websites need to think about "searchability" when creating the website.
of course the "oh wow! shiny!"-factor is more important to lure visitors.
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the solution would be to run a "standardized" search database program on each website that can link
to other databases.
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even glossy fashion magazines have a index of sorts. you can find article about "best hangover remedies" on page 22 and advertisement for D/G on page 123, 67 and 9 etc.
the websites need to also employe humans to created this database file (for which they are responsible) and then submit it to a central search entity (if they wish).
the coup would be for a start-up to develop this *free* "search-database" that can "plug-in" to "any" website to create a human editable search-database nutshell-file that could then be submitted ...
this "plug-in" would run on the local network (on own server if need for size) to create this index -not- "hey google here's my URL, send your bot over to index it a little bit will-ya please?".
but why bother : ) people don't link much anyways.
(Score: 2) by Oligonicella on Sunday June 29 2014, @02:39PM
As reasonable a search as any, no wall of adds and I don't have a single script suppress applied. Left side is a list of links, right side is a set of correctly related subtopics. Appropriate pics supplied on both sides, more on right.
Just popped it and ran a search on plesiosaur to confirm all that.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 29 2014, @03:43PM
I liked the old Google which could be used to find things on the Internet. In the past 5 years or so, their search results have gotten sloppy and imprecise. You just can't coax precise searches out of Google any longer. Google's search is getting useless. They keep making search worse and worse.
I don't get why they can't offer the old, precise results for people who want them. Have "Google Classic" or something. Why ruin the only thing they have going for them? No one gives a rip about self-driving cars, thermostats that let Google track their energy use, or smart watches. People use Google for search, and they're nothing like the used to be.
Google has peaked, and is only ruining things now. They ruined their precise searches. Even using "quotes" I can't get precision out of them any longer. They ruined image search. They just jumbled up the maps user interface and made it useless. (Why does it reset the satellite settings every time I go back now? Why is there so much clutter on the screen I can't see the map?)
Google needs a wakeup call. They need to roll the clock back to 2008.
(Score: 2) by carguy on Sunday June 29 2014, @11:52PM
Agreed that Google needs a wake up call. Any idea how to send them a message?
Lately I've been using https://startpage.com/ [startpage.com] which seems to do what it says -- if I search for something, my Gmail doesn't start sending me adverts about that kind of item.
Product searching with Google cues ads in Gmail.
Bing rarely finds the obscure things I seem to be looking for, only try it occasionally.
Leap.it is too busy for my eyes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by monster on Monday June 30 2014, @04:14PM
It's not only Google's fault.
Remember all those SEO crap of a few years ago? Part of it was legitimate, but the rest was a lot of "How to game Google results in your favor?". When enough people started doing it, quality of results went down the drain, Google modified its ranking system and a lot of legitimate pages got caught in the crossfire.
Like with the tragedy of the commons, everybody was so keen on gaming their rank that it lost its magic-like properties.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Sunday June 29 2014, @05:18PM
Kind of like it.... will probably use google and leap, depending on what/why/mood till i find a champion.
Let the game of thrones begin!
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Sunday June 29 2014, @06:55PM
How will an exhaustive search for "interrupt latency on TMS1000" be helped by displaying the results on cards. Or trying to find this on social links, in Twitter streams, real-time news or historical information? It's BULLOCKS. This business seems tailored to redundant social chit chatting people. This business doesn't add real value.
As for Google. They certainly lost ground on being a precision engine. There's a market place for a new engine that has sharp edges. Dummies need not to apply into the kitchen with sharp knifes.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by idetuxs on Monday June 30 2014, @12:16AM
Ok, so.. unseat google? Their website doesn't work without JavaScript and they even have JS from ajax.googleapis.com and maps.googleapis.com. If you have Noscript you can try it, allow scripts from leap.it but not from ajax.googleapis.com...IT DOESN'T WORK.
Now, despite that, Google is much better I may say. That kind of visual displaying it's not favorable for looking efficiently information (at least for me), it's annoying.
(Score: 2) by elf on Monday June 30 2014, @11:18AM
Its not all Google's fault, everyone is trying to game the system which makes it very hard to actually index web pages properly. For the most part I like the suggestive nature that google provides to search, for example spell correction and suggested alternatives to search. A lot of people have commented on the amount of ad's being show, I rarely see any and if there are they are quite well integrated and quite well ignored (although some I have clicked because they have been highly relevant)
In terms of leap.it, I hate it. I can't easily see which website are being returned (which is the point of a search engine), I don't want twitter links in my results (if I did I would search twitter) and its slow. This looks like a digg.com search engine to me.