Using most search engines is like finding a very enthusiastic kid - but not a very discerning one - to do your trick-or-treating for you. He makes the rounds and returns with a bag bulging with sweets. Unfortunately, it contains a profusion of candies that are not to your taste, including several pounds of stale promotional licorice. Worse, many of the wrappers are empty.
"I'll do better!" he pleads. "Next time send me out with a truck!"
Rather than building a fleet of larger and larger trucks, a new search engine called Northern Light is aiming to rewrite the rules of Web searching. By organizing results into what it calls "Custom Search Folders," Northern Light hopes to parcel out search data into more manageable form. And by supplementing the Web's vast info-base with its own "Special Collection" of journal articles, reference works, and even books, Northern Light is carrying Web-based searching beyond the Web.
The good news: Northern Light brings home a sack of neatly packaged treats, with a higher proportion of bonbons than most search sites. The bad news: after the site's 30-day beta testing period ends on 6 October, the "Special Collection" truffles will cost you - up to US$4 a bite.
A search on the name of the Argentinean master of surrealism Jorge Luis Borges, for instance, produces an orderly list of custom folder options beginning with "Borges, Jorge Luis - works, studies, and biography." Next is a folder of links to commercial sites related to the author's work. There's a folder dedicated to pages in Spanish, and one of Borges-related sites devoted to the short story as a form.
"If you walk into a library and ask about 'bonds,' the librarian doesn't just dump a load of books on the floor," Northern Light marketing manager Leslie Ray observes. "Are you asking about chemical bonds, municipal bonds, or James Bond? Our folders help you prioritize the information."
The folders are generated on the fly, rather than by a predetermined taxonomy, like Yahoo's. Even the raw results are of noticeably higher relevance than most brute-force engines - the result, Ray says, of a complex filtering process that is patent pending. Using methods of metadata analysis designed by a crew of information specialists - including five holders of graduate degrees in library science - the engine "views a page on women's issues differently than it views a page on hypertension," Ray explains.
Special Collection searches delve into a wide range of academic and professional journals, magazines, how-to guides, and reference works licensed for the Web by Northern Light, including Collier's Encyclopedia, the U.S. Pharmacopoeia, the 22-volume Magill Survey of Science, and the The 10-Minute Guide to 401k Plans. (With the Complete Guide to Medical Tests, the Complete Guide to Symptoms, Illness, and Surgery, and the Pharmacopoeia's image database of pills, Northern Light is a hypochondriac's dream.)
When the site starts charging for the Special Collection searches on 6 October, it will also offer subscriptions at a rate of $4.95 per month for 50 articles, with a no-questions-asked refund policy if the article retrieved does not suit the needs of the searcher.
"There's been a tremendous outpouring of frustration on the Net about search engines, says Ray. "We hope this will raise people's expectations, and change the kinds of resources that people use on the Web."
