Time for Action in Search

Transactions are the third type of search which are yet to be developed and explored by search engines.

Sometimes when you search you are looking for a way to do something: buy a present, book a flight, send a tweet, sell something, resolve a bug you're working on, send an email etc, search a topic-specific search engine etc.

Wouldn't it be good if your search engine provided a quick way to perform actions?

There is no reason why some search keywords should not become search commands.

That's why the "Do" section of Trexy's result pages are for taking actions related to search keywords / commands.

In the past month I've added over 1,700+ actions to Trexy. They are mostly actions to search other engines like Google, Wikipedia and many more.

This means you can quickly search Google - by starting your search with the search command "google". For example, searching Trexy for "google cars" shows all the Google action buttons related to "cars".

Search actions work by automatically submitting details to web forms. Does your website have a form where a user can perform actions? Why not add the action to Trexy?

Dynamic result pages: Find, Learn, Do

Research shows there are three types of search: navigational, informational and transactional. That's why Trexy result pages are divided into three sections: Find (navigational), Learn (informational), and Do (transactional) for a given keyword.

The order of these sections now changes depending on the search keyword. For example the Do section appears first on the "Buy Car" result page - as this is clearly a transactional search. Currently the "Buy Car" results page enables user's to quickly search AutoTrader to buy a car.

Other queries are navigational in nature. "Facebook", for example, is currently one of the top 10 searches that users enter to Find the social networking site facebook.com.

In the last month I've focussed on the Learn (informational) section. It is clear from listening to our users that the natural way to solve informational search is through question and answers. As  a result I've changed the learn section so you can quickly add your question to a keyword page. Here are the latest questions - can you help answer them?

New release: Find, Learn, Do

I've just released the next version of Trexy. 

In this release I've added some interesting features: search action buttons and user added content.

Trexy's results now appear in three sections: find (user trails), learn (user content), do (user actions). These are designed to equate with the three different types of search intent: navigational, informational and transactional. 

User actions enable the user to click on bespoke "action" buttons in the search results. This is really exciting as users can define one-click actions to help other users perform transactions fast! I'm looking forward to seeing how our users will put this to good use.

Your feedback is very welome: support@trexy.com.

Go Live - Again!

Here we go again!

I'm happy to announce that a new version of Trexy has just gone live. ;-)

We've learnt lots of lessons from our previous versions and made many changes, from the backend engine, to the new user interface and a simpler strapline:

find what others found™.

Finding what others found is the essence of the search trails idea: recommending results based on the search behaviour of others.

It is still the aim of our engine - to safely share search intelligence for the benefit of all users. Our new engine merges user search trails with crawler-based results to re-rank and describe search results.

We hope Trexy helps you find what others found. Your feedback is very welcome: support@trexy.com.

Stay tuned for more developments.

Trexy still on the Trail

We've just updated our blog and we're updating more behind the scenes too.

We are changing the way Trexy intersects search trails and the way the search results are presented. It's been great to see the recent trail/click path patents from the big players like Google and Microsoft - further confirmation that we were on the right trail from the beginning way back in 2003.

Flag & Bell Gets Spotted in the TNT Magazine

The Flag and Bell Summer Party 2009 made it in to the TNT Magazine this week. Congratulations to Andrew McDonough who has been spotted below:



For a closer look, check out page 14-15 of the latest TNT edition.

Trexy & T10 in the Amazon Computing Cloud

Check out what Nigel had to say at the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Start-up event today. Watch the podcast here.

Jeeves Strikes Back

Meg and I were there when they froze him in carbonite like poor Han Solo in the Empire Strikes Back.

But just like in the movie I thought it won't be long before he gets unfrozen again. Fortunately the good side of the force must have won in the Ask marketing department - and I'm happy to say - Jeeves is Back! 

A question answering search engine interface still sounds like a good idea to me.

May the force be with you Jeeves.

Flag & Bell Group on LinkedIn

The Flag & Bell has a network group listed on LinkedIn to help our members stay in touch and explore business opportunities.

Interested in joining? Please visit our profile site here: The Flag & Bell IT Networking Group.


Thanks to everyone who came along to the Flag & Bell event in April.

The winning team this month received four cinema tickets. Thanks again to the TNT Online IT Jobs Portal for sponsoring the quiz prize.

We are looking forward to our 3rd birthday party in May.

Turbo10 -> T10 = search engine + ad network

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.