Toolkit Addition

ToolKit: Search Voyeur

It's impossible to understand the Internet by thinking about it. It's our general perception that the behavior of people using the web is almost beyond comprehension. This week's pointer is to a tool called Search Voyeur. Provided by Magellan, a lesser known version of Yahoo!, Search Voyeur allows you to witness samples of the searches being conducted by real-time users.

Take an hour and get a feel for the real searches being conducted by real people. If you bookmark this site, you'll have access to the pulse of the web. When targeting advertising or search information, it's always useful to take a long look at Search Voyeur before spending money.

Search Tips

Search Tip: Reference.com Visit Reference.com for an extensive look at communities. The service provides indexing of Usenet (like DejaNews), Mailing Lists (like Liszt and Forums - chat rooms. Here's their basic search form. You can use it from here to get a feel for the service.

The website offers "templates" that are pre-formatted searches by interest. It's a great way to get familiar with the resources at your disposal in a particular area.

The most interesting feature offered by Reference.com is a cyber-clipping service. Active Queries allow you to passively monitor the discussion in any/all Internet forums tracked by Reference.COM. You store queries on the Reference.COM server which are automatically rerun at an interval you specify. The results (since the last search) are emailed to you.

You have to register to use the cyber-clipping service. But, if you want a passive feed of interesting information, it's worth the time and energy required to figure it out.