[Search-l] [Personalized Search]

[Grahame Gould]

I support the effort to develop an open source search engine.
 
However on the issue that's been raised of:
 
>       This seems to be one of the user interface issues where the
>real-world trade-off is very unclear, and can't be determined
abstractly. 
>That is, whether it's better to be immediately right 90% of the time
and
>wrong 10% of the time, or to have an additional step for
disambiguation,
>is apparently an extremely complicated determination. One big potential

>benefit to an open search service might be supporting some
non-proprietary
>research on those details.

I wonder why the assumption is being made that it's one or the other.
Google already seems to incorporate both possibilities in its searches
when it lists its traditional responses to a search and up the top asks
"Did you mean ..." and lists alternate searches that would ordinarily
rank lower but may be what you're actually looking for.
 
I'm sure that both of the above can be incorporated into search results
similar to what Google is doing, unless I've misunderstood something.
 
Grahame Gould
Information Coordinator
Shire of Wyndham East Kimberley
Kununurra, WA, Australia
(08) 9168 4100 Phone
(08) 9168 1798 Fax
www.thelastfrontier.com.au <http://www.thelastfrontier.com.au/> 
 
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