Thursday, June 15, 2006
Did You Mean? Free!
UPDATE: Welcome Diggers! the direct demo is at Properspell
I was doing a website integration recently, and the client asked for a way to provide suggestions for their search results which were unobtrusive to the user, but could provide some feedback to the administrator to analyze traffic and search flow. I had never really thought about suggestions for search on a retail website, but the thought of traffic flow and analysis really piqued my interest level. The first thing I thought of to accomplish this was the Google-API.
I had worked with the Google-API in the past, and knew of its limitations but figured someone has been in a similar situation and can up with a clever solution. Well, I was right and wrong in that assumption.
I didn't really find any backend-ready means to do this, but I did find an amazing AJAX 'Did you mean' implementation of the Google-API that is fully hosted with analysis and reporting features. It was exactly what I was looking for.
It turns out that Properspell.com and it's parent site Jaunter have worked out some commercial arrangements for the use of the Google-API, which is one of the first that I have heard of.
I signed up out of shear curiosity. From what I have gotten out of it so far, I am most pleased. Prompt communication, and willingness to modify based on user suggestions.
It literally is a few lines of JavaScript dropped into any web form, and suggestions are displayed asynchronously on the results page. A working example of it is The Daniel Boone Regional Library. I never knew Missouri was a test bed of AJAX madness.
My client is looking forward to deployment, and I am looking forward to my paycheck for the Summer. If you have 10 minutes to play with a new bit of Web 2.0 goodness, I'd recommend this
I was doing a website integration recently, and the client asked for a way to provide suggestions for their search results which were unobtrusive to the user, but could provide some feedback to the administrator to analyze traffic and search flow. I had never really thought about suggestions for search on a retail website, but the thought of traffic flow and analysis really piqued my interest level. The first thing I thought of to accomplish this was the Google-API.
I had worked with the Google-API in the past, and knew of its limitations but figured someone has been in a similar situation and can up with a clever solution. Well, I was right and wrong in that assumption.
I didn't really find any backend-ready means to do this, but I did find an amazing AJAX 'Did you mean' implementation of the Google-API that is fully hosted with analysis and reporting features. It was exactly what I was looking for.
It turns out that Properspell.com and it's parent site Jaunter have worked out some commercial arrangements for the use of the Google-API, which is one of the first that I have heard of.
I signed up out of shear curiosity. From what I have gotten out of it so far, I am most pleased. Prompt communication, and willingness to modify based on user suggestions.
It literally is a few lines of JavaScript dropped into any web form, and suggestions are displayed asynchronously on the results page. A working example of it is The Daniel Boone Regional Library. I never knew Missouri was a test bed of AJAX madness.
My client is looking forward to deployment, and I am looking forward to my paycheck for the Summer. If you have 10 minutes to play with a new bit of Web 2.0 goodness, I'd recommend this
