Search – don’t get me started…

Search is an area of special interest of mine. I am particularly interested in the advancement of search from web 1.0 through 2.0 and into the semantic web 3.0 era.

But, lets take it slowly.

First lets look at some simple features to enhance your Firefox 3.0 searching experience with Google. The Google toolbar comes as a standard with Firefox (up in the top right hand corner). There are lots of ways to enhance your search experience and refine your search results with this toolbar – but for now lets just look at Google Search

You will all be familiar with the standard Google search bar found on iGoogle, thet Google home page and the Google search bar – but how can one enhance the search, refine the results, preview the web pages and explore additional sites?

Google Preview
This Firefox add-on inserts ‘preview images‘ (thumbnails) of web sites, amazon.com and .de products into the Google and Yahoo search results pages. When you click on a GooglePreview enhanced amazon.com or .de search result and actually purchase a product, you support the further development of GooglePreview and help cover the cost of the servers. Read more or download the application from the Firefox add-on page

Customize Google:
CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension that enhances the standard Google search platform. Additional search results are available from links to Yahoo, Ask.com, AllThWeb, Live, Lycos, Technorati, Feedster, Wikipedia, Bloglines, Altavista and A9. The ability to perform the same search query across multiple search engines yeilds some interesting results!
This add-on is also able to be configured to remove unwanted information like ads or spam. All features are optional and easily configured. Take a look at the CustomizeGoogle website or download directly from Firefox.

Surf Canyon:
Brilliant little invention to assist in uncovering the information you need from your search without having to leaf through the top 10 pages of your Google, Yahoo, MSN or Craiglist.
Each search result you visit which has associated results ‘deeper’ in the search results list will display a small symbol, and by clicking on the symbol you can increase the depth and relevance of your search. For more information check out the beta version on Firefox.