7 ways to improve informational searches – (5 of 7) Share your knowledge and findings with others
Fifth of 7 ways to improve informational searches …
5. Share your knowledge and findings with others
When you search for something on the Web, you are rarely the first or only one to have done that search. Many users before you would have done that search and many more after you will too, and yet, everyone sees more or less the same results, and no one benefits from anyone else’s search experience! Can you benefit from the search efforts or the knowledge of users before you? Or can you do something to share your search efforts or knowledge for the benefit of users after you?
Zakta enables you to publish your findings or knowledge in the form of Zakta Guides. And when you search on Zakta, you can also benefit from the Zakta Guides published by others.
A Zakta Guide is a living document that contains organized information on a topic that you may have found through the searching on a topic, or may have already known about a topic. A well-authored Zakta Guide is an excellent starting point to explore the topic it covers.
Take a look at some of these Zakta Guides created and shared by other people:
Ivory Soap Advertising History
U.S. political satirists from the 1950s-today
7 ways to improve informational searches – (4 of 7) Save what you’ve found, and save time when you return to search again
Fourth of 7 ways to improve informational searches …
4. Save what you’ve found and save time when you get back
Searching for information is a process. Invariably, you have to stop somewhere and will have to come back to your searching later on. Can you pause your process and return to where you left it, later on, or do you have to start your search all over again?
On Zakta, all the changes you make to your search results, or things you’ve added to your ClipPad are all saved automatically into your Zakta account. You will automatically get “your search results” when you search the same topic next.
You can also go to the My Searches page to see all your past searches, access the results with your edits, or delete them.
7 ways to improve informational searches – (3 of 7) Own and control the search process and results completely
Third of 7 ways to improve informational searches …
3. Own and control the search process and results completely
Often, the search results have a mix of personally relevant and irrelevant results. Can you edit, delete, or reorder your search results so they reflect what you personally find as relevant to you?
On Zakta, the search results are completely editable, and under your control. You can delete results you don’t like. You can drag-and-drop results to rearrange them. You can add tags and annotations to any result. Just hover over any result, and use the toolbar that is visible on the result and edit it the way you want it.
Frequently, you have to do multiple queries to find information on the same topic, so the information you need is actually spread across the search results for multiple queries. Can you keep the interesting results from these multiple queries in one place for easy consumption?
Zakta has the perfect tool for this scenario, called the ClipPad that you can use to save information that you want, in one place, from your various queries on the same topic.
The Web is so big that, sometimes, no single Web search engine can help you find all the information you need from one place. Can you easily search alternative sources to find what you are looking for?
Zakta has the ideal solution for this in the form of Zakta SearchPacks, which bring together the best Web search engines of a given type / category and lets you search them all from a single interface.
Finally, sometimes you find the information you need while you are browsing, not while you are searching, even if you started off with a search result page from some search engine. Can you keep these important finds together with other things you might have found earlier?
Zakta has an elegant solution for this problem, in the form of a Plugin for Firefox, that enables you to search anywhere, and clip and save anything you want from anywhere directly into your ClipPad (or your Guides, a feature we’ll cover in a follow on post).
7 ways to improve informational searches – (2 of 7) Explore the topic of your query with related topics and subtopics
The second of 7 ways to improve informational searches …
2. Explore the topic of your query with related topics and subtopics
Sometimes, the initial query you used might be ambiguous. For example, if you search for joe jackson, what did you really mean to search for? The musician, the baseball player or someone else? Your typical Web search engine results will be a mix of results you want and those that are irrelevant to you. Can you easily specify the right query corresponding to what you really meant to search for?
Try a search for joe jackson on Zakta, and you can see that it prompts you to pick from “Joe Jackson (musician) | Shoeless Joe Jackson | Joe Jackson, Sr. | …”
In this way, Zakta’s semantic disambiguation facility puts you in control of choosing what you really meant to search for, and get better quality information in the process.
When you are searching for information on a new topic, it takes extra time and effort in becoming familiar with the nature of information within that topic. Can you easily explore the subtopics or related topics corresponding to your search, from your search results page?
Try a search for jim crow laws on Zakta, and you can see that it prompts you to explore related topics like “Plessy v. Ferguson | Civil Rights Act of 1875 | Voting Rights Act | Civil Rights Act of 1964 | Separate but equal | …“.
Zakta helps the exploration of a topic, by automatically suggesting semantically related topics and subtopics for you.
7 ways to improve informational searches – (1 of 7) Start with organized search results
The first of 7 ways to improve informational searches …
1. Start with organized search results
When you are searching for information on a topic you are not familiar with, seeing a flat, disorganized list of search results is a big hurdle. Can you get organized search results from your tool of choice?
Zakta organizes the search results for millions of topics of information into meaningful categories automatically.
For example: Search for dementia on Zakta, and you’ll see how results are organized into Reference, Web Sites, Books and Articles, Educational, What It Is, Prevalence, Causes, Prevention, Symptoms, Risk Factors, Tests, Diagnosis, Medical Treatment, Alternatives, Research, History, Prognosis, and Resources. See below.
Or, search for michael jordan on Zakta, and you’ll see results organized into Reference, Web Sites, Books and Articles, Educational, Bio, Career, Records, Teams, Controversies, Fan Fare, Video Highlights, and Trivia. See below.
7 ways to improve informational searches (Summary)
Almost everyone who uses the Internet uses it at some point to search for something. But there’s a difference between transactional searches — the search for a specific fact, such as the price of an item, a map or the phone number of a local business – and deeper, more involved, informational searches.
Informational searches usually involve the hunt for information on topics or subjects that don’t usually lend themselves to a single or specific answer. Informational searches can be very broad, such as cars or mp3 players, or they can be narrow, such as caribbean destinations or voip service options for small business. And they can be everything in between. Usually, a person has to sift through one or more Web pages to find what they are looking for. Typically, informational searches are time-consuming. Sometimes, they’re downright frustrating.
Here are 7 ways to improve informational searches.
- Start with organized search results
- Explore the topic of your query with related topics and subtopics
- Own and control the search process and results completely
- Save what you’ve found, and save time when you return to search again
- Share your knowledge and findings with others
- Collaborate with people you trust
- Connect and stay informed
Do you find these ideas to improve informational searches appealing? What other ideas do you have to improve informational searches?
Please take Zakta for a spin and let us know what you think. Zakta is just in public beta now, and we are eager to hear from you about your opinions and what we can do to make Zakta work really well for your informational searches.
Introducing Zakta
“Innovation in search has just begun”, Michael Arrington wrote in May 2008. He was right! The last 12 months have seen a lot of amazing tools come to market, after what seemed like a lull in search engine innovation during the previous 5-6 years. From steady innovations at Yahoo or Ask, to an ambitious attempted Google-killer from Cuil, to Wolfram’s Alpha, to Google’s own myriad innovations in search including Google Squared, many promising startups, and most recently, Microsoft’s Bing, the market seems humming again with search engine innovations.
Into this space of frenetic innovation in search, we introduce Zakta, a personal and social Web search engine. Zakta helps people find information better from the Web, by blending rich algorithmic Web search, with information organization, personalization, information sharing and collaboration.
In effect, Zakta takes a different approach to Web search by infusing deep personalization of search results, social media and social networking into a holistic solution for informational searches.
But, does the world need another Web search engine?
The Web has become a really big place, and there is an ever-present need for good search tools to harness all the information coming online:
- The amount of content online is growing explosively, estimated at a trillion pages of information and growing steeply every day.
- Social media has fundamentally shifted the equation as user-created content heralded the so-called Web 2.0 phenomenon, bringing even more content online faster than ever before.
- Multimedia, local information, content in different languages, specialized databases and repositories all add to the staggering diversity of content now available online.
- The social networking phenomenon has become very entrenched and has promoted even more content creation and sharing in networks like MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn and others.
The world might not need one more generic me-too Web search engine, but what these trends says to me is that there is room for innovative search tools that will solve specific needs.That is why the market today is alive with many investments in search startups as well as continued innovations from the entrenched players.
So, what specific need does Zakta solve?
People have two kinds of experiences with Web search today.
With the first kind, they get instant gratification for their queries. For example, look for a company name like Cisco, and you get its Web site link as the first hit quite often, and these days, you even get instant access to contact information and possibly even other relevant information stock quotes or a map right away.
With the second kind, there’s a good chance people will spend a lot of time trying to get what they were looking for, and possibly get quite frustrated with the search effort. For example, look for information on a topic like college financial aid, or the voip service options for small business, or your next vacation destination and you’ll more than likely be sifting through lots of results, of probably more than one query, trying to get what you want.
Search industry experts know of this phenomenon.
- Transactional searches, as the first class of searches are sometimes called, lend themselves to a very specific answer, and given the wealth of information available online, a sophisticated enough engine can find the answer. For simplicity, I’ve combined factual searches (queries to find a specific fact like the 32nd US president) and navigational searches (queries to find a specific web site like singapore airlines) into this group, because they lend themselves to a very specific answer.
- Informational searches, as the second class of searches are sometimes called, do not lend themselves to a very specific answer. Here, the wealth of information on the Web can actually contribute to information overload, especially given that the information is usually not organized for easy consumption. It also doesn’t help that today’s search tools don’t go very far in supporting the processes that users take to find the information they want.
Zakta is focused on solving the problem with informational searches.
How does Zakta help with informational searches?
I believe that there are many things missing in today’s approach to search, that contribute to the informational search problem:
- Information on the Web is disorganized, and this tends to make it more complex for a person to find easily what they need.
- Searching for information is a process, and today’s tools do not support the process. For the most part, the search results page tends to be read-only (exceptions are there, of course) and leaves all the “sifting” to be done within a person’s mind or using outside tools like bookmarking, text notes, emails, post-its etc.
- Search engines haven’t traditionally involved the people they serve, so they are unable to leverage knowledge that people have to improve the searching process to their specific needs, and they are unable to let people leverage knowledge from others they trust
With this understanding, we designed Zakta to help a person with their informational searches in layers:
- Start with organized search results
- Explore the topic of your query with related topics and subtopics
- Own and control the search process and results completely
- Save what you’ve found and save time when you get back
- Share your knowledge and findings in the form of Zakta Guides
- Collaborate with people you trust
- Connect and stay informed
By putting the searcher and people they trust into the searching mix, Zakta makes a noteworthy departure from traditional Web search engine design.
I’ll be sharing more information on each of these benefits in future blog posts.
What is the status of Zakta?
Zakta is now in public beta, having gone through 22-months of open development with user input since August 2007. We are committed to the principle of continuous improvement, and have been making steady improvements to the capabilities as well as user experience.
We want Zakta to be extremely useful for your informational searches. Our intention is to serve lots of very happy users with our system.
Early user feedback indicates that people like what they see with Zakta, but also indicate that there’s more room for simplifying our interface. We’ve been hard at work to listen and adapt as fast as we can.
And to this end, we value your feedback greatly. So please take Zakta for a spin and let us know.
The people behind Zakta
Zakta is a labor of love and passion for me. I am Sundar Kadayam, and am Founder and CEO of Zakta. Prior to Zakta, I was co-founder and CTO at Intelliseek and then at Nielsen BuzzMetrics.
I’m joined in this effort by some amazing people who I respect dearly.
Mark Reed, CTO of Zakta, is a brilliant software architect with a rich track record of building and supporting large scale, commercially successful systems. His background in distributed systems, search engines, text analytics, social media and databases provide the relevant base of knowledge upon which Zakta is built.
Mahendra Vora, serial entrepreneur and owner of many companies, and my partner and co-founder from Intelliseek is a partner and Chairman of Zakta, and continues to be a mentor on a wide range of topics.
I also have the good fortune of having the advice and support of many industry veterans, who I’ll call out in future blog posts.
Zakta is a TINY company, operated out of Cincinnati, Ohio, my home of over 20 years.
BTW: The name “Zakta” is derived from the word “Exactly”!
