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Yahoogle! - Putting the Top Two Search Monsters to the Test

Posted On: Mon, 09/15/2008 - 03:21 by charles

When you use the Internet to find something, more often than not, you're using a search engine as a portal to this information. Nine times out of ten, you're using one of Google Search or Yahoo! Search. In a few short years, Google has amassed a huge market share, taking from the likes of Yahoo! and Microsoft. However, I've read articles recently* claiming that Yahoo!, with changes made in their search technology to combat the Google onslaught, now returns better, more relevant, and safer results, but are still failing to gain back market share because of the huge amount of momentum that Google has gained in the industry.

So, with this in mind, I thought it would be interesting to put these two search moguls to the test. I've created a simple search mashup, dubbed Yahoogle!, which I think might help verify these claims. In short, Yahoogle! takes a search query, feeds it to both Yahoo! Search and Google Search, anonymizes the results, and displays them intermixed in one search result list. Relevancy is measured purely by clicks, nothing more. Anyways, give it a test-spin and let me know what you think. If enough people search here, I'm sure we'll start seeing some trends...

Happy Searching!

*Note: I wrote this post a few months ago but didn't publish it at the time, so the recency of these articles is based on when I wrote this post :)

**Note: I made Yahoogle! in about 2 days, so it isn't fool-proof. Yes, with a little insight, you can tell which search results came from which search engine, but that's not the point. At a glance, it's not bad for 2 days. Oh, and it doesn't work in IE :p

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eBay Google Gadget using AS3 eBay Library and Google Gadgets API

Posted On: Tue, 12/12/2006 - 08:00 by charles

I came across the Google Gadgets API today while I was working on my eBay library and I had a silly notion...why not utilize the eBay library together with the Google Gadgets API and create an eBay Gadget! So I did! It's actually very simple and more of a proof-of-concept than anything else, but it works and I think it's actually quite neat.

In a nutshell, the gadget will allow you to search for items, view item details, and even add and remove them from your personalized watchlist. And, as an added bonus, since it uses the Google Gadgets API, this gadget can be used on Google's Personalized Homepage or placed on any website as a regular web widget.

*Update: My laptop with the code for this project has died since I've created this project. That's okay since it wasn't a huge codebase, and newer versions of the APIs I was using have since been released. I wrote the initial gadget in a day, using the alpha ActionScript 3 eBay Library (not the newest beta release, as is on Google Code) and the Google Gadget API. See the screens of what I've done in a couple of hours, investigate the tools and the APIs and start coding!

Charles

Charles Bihis is a Computer Scientist for Adobe Systems. The views expressed in this blog are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of his employers.

 

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