March 2008 Archive

Language Limit Showdown

In recent months I have been speaking and writing about some of the language search and translation features of the search engines. Which search engine has the most language limits? Which online translator has the most language pairs? And which ones offers translated search? (Exalead, Yahoo!, and Google, respectively). So I've added a new Language Search Tools page, with links to pages about Language Limits, Online Translation, and Translated Search. I have also finally made a major update to my Search Engines by Search Features page and linked the language page from there.

For many searchers, especially those of us in the middle of a fairly mono-lingual part of the U.S., the language tools may have little appeal, but even in the midst of Montana, I still find times that I come across a non-English site, email, or term that can benefit from the use of these tools.

Yahoo! Face Change

The main Yahoo! page has cleaned up and re-emphasized its search box. The whole top inch or so of the page has a new look.

Similar to the cleaner, pared down page at search.yahoo.com, and reminiscent of some other well-known search engine, it is a pleasing change. The main page still has plenty of portal content below the search box:

Contrast that with the old look that had the logo on the left and additional buttons and boxes. See the Google Blogoscoped post for a series of home page screenshots over time. I still wish that News was one of the choices above the box instead of having it hidden under "more." Otherwise I find the new look to be easier to use and cleaner than the old.

Updated Bookmarklets

I've updated my search bookmarklets page due to changes from some of the search engines including Gigablast's new interface, finally changing msn.com to live.com in the code, and the addition of several new links:

• An animated .gif of the search transfer bookmarklets
• Moving the search transfer bookmarklets to the top
• A new bookmarklet for numbering Yahoo! results
• Updating the bookmarklet for numbering Google results
• Gigablast and Exalead search box links

The search transfer bookmarklets are the ones that I use the most to quickly switch from one search engine to another with the same search query. It has been interesting seeing how the bookmarklet functionality changes over time even when I do not change the underlying JavaScript of the bookmarklet. For the past several months, I could use the Yahoo! bookmarklet after a Google, Ask, or Live search, but I could not use any others after a Yahoo! search. Now those bookmarklets work again. So at the moment, I am only have a problem using them after a Gigablast or Exalead search.

Amazon Dropping Search Inside The Book?

I am very disappointed to see that Amazon seems to no longer have the Search Inside The Book feature. Clued into this loss by Marydee's post yesterday, I can no longer even get Marydee's workarounds of going to the Canadian or British versions of Amazon to work. So what's missing?

• No more Search Inside the Book arrows on certain cover shots
• None of the text statistics and ability to search within a book on those books
• A search on a unique term like tilinca which only occurs in the contents of books now gets no results.
• No Look Inside excerpts or any view of the contents of the book

I certainly hope that this is a temporary issue and not a permanent closing of the program. Some of the initial cover shots still have the Search Inside graphic on top as in the following example. But clicking on the link takes me to a page with no ability to view any of the contents.

Searching via the nearly-defunct A9, I was able to get a list of results for books including my search term, but I still could not get inside the books at Amazon. If this continues, it would be a significant and major loss of searchable content in books!

[Update: Just before clicking post, I am starting to see the Search Inside links again. Phew! I hope this was just a temporary glitch and not a major change in policy!]