Kosmix Takes Niche Searching to a New Level - Going Beyond Travel
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I couldn’t leave it alone at travel, of course; I had to check out at least the health search engine as well. So I performed a search for breast cancer. Kosmix really shines here. Categories include Basic Information, with subcategories on Prevention, Treatments, Symptoms, Causes, and more; Expert Information from journals, clinical trials, and case studies; plus Diet & Nutrition, Message Boards, Fitness, Blogs, Alternative Medicine…all neatly separated so that I could explore each one. I was surprised to see a category for Men’s Health; I knew men could get breast cancer too, but I wasn’t expecting 197 hits! Turns out some of them were for prostate cancer, but other links looked fairly relevant.
At this point, just below the box on the left that listed categories for me to click on, I finally spotted a link labeled “Personalize your results.” When I clicked on it, it took me to a page that would let me define my interest level in each health area: not interested, interested, or very interested (“interested” was clicked by default in all areas). I could choose my interest level for five different information sources, three different treatment options, and three patient types (Babies & Kids, Women’s Health, Men’s Health). Helpfully, next to each of the options listed was a link labeled “What’s this?” which, when clicked, led to a brief description of each category.
So I made a few changes, saved my personalization, and repeated my search. This time, I could click on a link below the categories box that said “Your Personalized Results.” These results were different from the ones I saw without personalization. Was the difference significant? It’s hard to say. Still, the personalized results did turn up a link about breast cancer and family history on the first page that didn’t show up so early without the personalization. Given that most searchers don’t look past the first page—and that a family history of breast cancer is particularly relevant in my case—I’d give Kosmix a few points for that.
I had to check out the political search engine, too, at least briefly. So I typed in “Marriage” (apparently everything is political these days). The results were pretty much as I expected them to be. For example, the Reason Foundation came up near the top of the Libertarian results, with an article on “Outing Government from Marriage.”
To be fair to Google, the search engine giant did pretty well when I searched for breast cancer; it even returned news results related to the topic, which Kosmix didn’t. And it turned up pages that Kosmix’s political search engine missed on marriage, such as the Alternatives to Marriage Project. On the other hand, when I put a more politically charged topic into Google, the top sites were all conservative; Kosmix’s political search engine allows you to gain easier access to a range of views. That may have implications for search engine optimization.
So what do I think of Kosmix in general? I really like their approach as far as separating topics into categories, and letting you browse the top results in each category. And I like the fact that it offers a range of views. I would like to see the company add news stories as a separate category on some of the searches, as those would be highly relevant for certain things. Of course, Kosmix isn’t for every search, but it doesn’t endeavor to be. All in all, I think the search engine is off to a decent start. It will be interesting to see how it performs in its next iteration.
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