Bessed, A Different Approach to Human-Powered Search - User Interaction With Bessed
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Every search result that is returned is really a blog. At the bottom of the page is a form you can fill out to give feedback, which looks something like this:
That image is pretty self-explanatory to anybody who has ever commented on a blog, so I’m not going to go into any further detail. I will say that some topics have lots of comments attached to them, and Jusko gets involved in replying as well. This helps to provide the social aspect to the search engine.
If you want to get an interesting look at how the site works, try adding a topic. Remember when I tried to search for juggling and came back empty-handed? It’s easy to click on the link for “Suggest a new page.” This takes you to a page that explains the site’s guidelines for submission. Right now they’re only accepting submissions aimed at a U.S. audience, and only English-language sites at that. (By way of explanation, an Australian site aimed at Australians wouldn’t meet their requirements…but an Australian site aimed at tourists, especially tourists from abroad, would).
On this page, you can scroll down and see the 99 comments (at this time of writing) from people who have suggested adding topics and/or URLs, with follow-up comments from Bessed workers explaining when and where a site was added; “Tim, your site has been added under Nintendo Wii” with a link to the Nintendo Wii page is a typical entry here. But some sites do get rejected for not meeting the requirements and other sites get included in ways that might perhaps raise an eyebrow.
Take one site that was accepted with the comment “web, we’ve added your site under Fresno Wedding Photographers, but you probably won’t like our description of your site.” Indeed, if you check out that page, you find this description for the fifth link: “Digital Engineering Fresno Wedding Photography - We’re not even quite sure if this is the name of the company, and, to be honest, the Web site doesn’t inspire much confidence, but they do show some wedding photos and offer a price list and phone number. Hopefully the photography is more artful than the Web site.”
It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, and one wonders if it really should have been included at all. On the other hand, if this site had been pumped up with search engine optimization it could very well have made it to the top of an algorithm-using search engine with no comments or warnings at all. Also, with any luck, as more people become interested in Bessed, it will attract users who can suggest better sites and recommend the removal of sites that aren’t so good.
Part search engine, part blog, part social site…even after reviewing Bessed, it’s a little tricky to categorize. Perhaps Jusko himself characterized it best when he explained in an email to me that “Our goal is not to get people to completely switch away from where they get information---instead it’s to be a trusted source that other Webmasters link to and other search engines rank highly.” It may not boast a lot in its index yet, but it’s worth watching.
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