A new Australian search engine called Mooter was launched last week.
The splash it caused on bulletin boards frequented by search engine enthusiasts and experts was indicative of its potential.
Mooter's competitive advantage lies in its use of "clustering" to serve up search results in meaningful categories. The technique isn't new, but it's well implemented in this case.
As CEO Liesl Capper explains in her post to WebmasterWorld:
"Most search engines tackle the non-trivial task of organizing massive amounts of info from the same angle: 'lets decide on behalf of the searcher what is most relevant, based on what the bulk of the general public thinks is relevant.'
We decided to rather expend our efforts watching how individual PEOPLE actually search, see where it hurts, fix that. So, you know how it goes: type in search phrase, 3 mill results, read, read, read, scroll, click, back to results, read, read, click, then go back and type in a different phrase to educate the engine more about your needs. So there already are about 10 things you have to do, and that’s assuming the sort of search where you have a pretty clear idea what you after to begin with.
While you are reading, your mind is forming a sort of scaffolding with all the data. Hanging around in fluid nodes in this scaffolding are roughly held together conceptual groups – we don't really like handling more than 3-5 chunks at once.
The reason for this is pretty simple - back in our troglodyte days you would die rather quickly if your mind didn’t work like this: you had to focus on essential clumps on data (and clump details if there were too many), and discard anything extraneous (even though the 'extraneous' in today’s world may be critical info).
This means sometimes we got it wrong, by putting things in wrong nodes or assuming incorrect relationships between nodes, but it was better than slowing your decisions down and being eaten by something meaner and (possibly) smellier than yourself. That’s why so few people go past results page 2 of traditional engines. And that’s why we group conceptually, rather than try override human hardwiring."
Anyway, you'll be hearing a little more about Mooter here at mediajunk for reasons I can't divulge ;)
For now though, have a Moot and let me know what you think...
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