U Rank: Microsoft Discovers Social Search
(Page 1 of 4 )
Everybody wonders what's bubbling away in Google Labs, to the point that we sometimes forget that other major search companies boast their own research and development departments. To wit, Microsoft Research began offering its own variation of social search in October 2008. Dubbed U Rank, it's an interesting experiment.
So what exactly is U Rank? The short version, from the service's home page, states that “U Rank is a search engine that allows people to organize, edit and annotate search results, as well as share information with others.” It's a research prototype, so it's not available on the main Live Search page; indeed, it may never be. The software giant says the project will help it learn more about how people use these kinds of technologies. One can only hope the information will help the company pull itself out of its distant third position in the search engine market.
The project features its own blog, of course, open to any interested readers. If you want to try out U Rank itself, however, you must register. You either need to already have a Windows Live ID or not mind creating one. I thought I didn't have a Windows Live ID, but suspected I might have created one and forgotten about it. As it turned out, I did; when I tried signing in using my (non-Hotmail) e-mail address and one of my standard passwords, U Rank took me to a window that said “We're sorry. Urank is only accessible to US users right now. We're working on this...”
I can't fault Microsoft for this. When I emailed one of the people handling the project (their email addresses are easy to find, because they're looking for feedback), he explained the issue. They weren't yet tracking IP addresses at the time I did this review, and I didn't have my country listed in my Windows Live ID profile. Adding it fixed the issue. Kudos to Microsoft and those involved with this project, by the way; I heard back from them very quickly (within half an hour).
So after I got that straightened out and was able to get to U Rank, this is what I saw:
Next: Searching, Enhanced >>
More Search Engine News Articles
More By Terri Wells
