PubSub, Rollyo Offer Web Search Services The Big Engines Don't
The Internet search business is a hot topic. But most of the talk centers on the advertising revenue it generates, not on what is happening in the actual search process itself. And most of the attention is paid to the search giants, like Google and Yahoo, rather than to smaller companies that are tinkering with interesting new techniques.
These small sites are aimed at refining search, improving its accuracy and making it more convenient and more personal. I've been testing just two of them, PubSub and Rollyo, and I have found they add a dimension that goes beyond what the main Google and Yahoo search sites offer.
PubSub is an automated system that constantly matches your search terms against millions of blogs, online discussions, news releases and SEC filings, and notifies you when there is a match. Rollyo allows you to create your own little search engines, focused on topics you care about and sources you prefer. Both do things standard searches can't.
Rollyo stands for "Roll Your Own Search Engine." While it uses Yahoo's search technology, it allows you to target a query by limiting the Web sites that are searched to only those you think will yield the best results. Instead of searching the entire Web for "sourdough," you could limit your search to a collection of sites you believe have the best information about bread. These customized search engines are called "searchrolls."
To create a searchroll, you go to the Rollyo site (rollyo.com) and specify as many as 25 sites that you believe are the most relevant on any given topic. If you don't want to manually type in the Web sites to be included in a searchroll, you can upload your browser bookmarks to Rollyo and just select the ones you want to use.
Once you create a searchroll, you can use it over and over for anything you want to search on that topic, and so can others who visit the Rollyo site and are interested in the same topic. In return, you can use searchrolls others have created. If you don't find what you want when you perform a searchroll search, you can expand your search to the entire Web with one click.
Each searchroll gets its own Web address, so you don't have to wade through the whole Rollyo site to get to it, and you can email this address to others. You can even add your searchroll to the drop-down list of search engines in the toolbar of the Firefox Web browser, so you can search it without first navigating to the Rollyo site.
For instance, I created a searchroll about my beloved Boston Red Sox that includes 25 of my favorite Red Sox Web sites. You can try it out at rollyo.com/wmossberg/red_sox_nation.
Rollyo also features searchrolls created by what it calls "High Rollers" -- famous people or experts in various fields. For instance, there is a searchroll on online shopping created by the actress Debra Messing; a fashion searchroll by the designer Diane Von Furstenberg; and a searchroll of political blogs by the columnist and activist Arianna Huffington.
You wouldn't want to use Rollyo for every search you perform. But if you often search in a few specific topic areas, it might be worth it to use, or create, a searchroll covering that area.
PubSub is something entirely different. It is a tool for staying constantly updated on references to a topic of continuing interest that appear in blogs, online discussions called news groups, SEC filings and news releases.
In a normal search, you type in a term and the search engine tries to match it against an index of Web sites. It's a one-time process. But in a PubSub search, your search terms stay constant and are continuously matched against a changing stream of data gleaned from PubSub's sources. When a match occurs, even if it's months after you entered your search term, it pops up in PubSub and you're notified.
PubSub calls itself a "matching engine," and it says that its business is "prospective" or "future" search -- searching against data that may not have appeared yet. For instance, last summer, I created a PubSub search that was still yielding results yesterday, returning information that hadn't been posted to the Web back when I started the search.
To create a PubSub search, which the company calls a "subscription," you go to pubsub.com and type in the term or terms you want PubSub to continuously match against the data it collects. You can have multiple subscriptions, and the whole thing is free.
You can check for results by visiting the PubSub Web site, or you can incorporate PubSub into your browser by downloading a "sidebar" module that lists PubSub results in a special window and notifies you if a new match has been found. These sidebars are available for Internet Explorer on Windows and for Firefox on Windows, Macintosh and Linux.
PubSub also allows you to limit your search to certain types of sources, for instance just press releases. It hopes to add more types of sources over time.
Major search engines are experimenting with ideas similar to Rollyo's, and you can do some of what PubSub does in certain "RSS reader" programs that manage summaries of blogs and news sites. But Rollyo and PubSub work well and are worth a look.
新型网络搜索服务欣然登场
互联网搜索是眼下的热门话题，但大多数的讨论都集中在它产生的广告收入上，而非搜索过程本身正在经历的变化。此外，大部份的注意力都集中在Google和雅虎(Yahoo)这些搜索巨头上，而不是那些正在尝试通过新技术来完善搜索服务的小公司。
这些小型网站致力于完善搜索服务，提高搜索的准确度，使之更方便、更个性化。我刚刚试用了两个──PubSub和Rollyo，发现它们具备一项Google和雅虎等主流搜索引擎不具备的特色。
PubSub是一套自动系统，它不间断地在数以百万计的博客、在线讨论、新闻稿和美国证券交易委员会(SEC)存档文件中寻找和你的关键词匹配的内容，一旦找到就会通知你。Rollyo则允许你创建自己的小型搜索引擎，把焦点放在你感兴趣的话题以及你偏好的资源上。这两项搜索服务提供的都是传统搜索引擎办不到的。
Rollyo的意思是“启动你自己的搜索引擎”。虽然它用的也是雅虎的搜索技术，但允许你把检索的网站限制在那些你相信能产生最佳效果的网址上，从而锁定你的查询。如果你想找关于面包的信息，那么你可以把搜索限制在一系列你认为能提供最佳相关信息的网址上，而不必在互联网的汪洋大海中只捞到一个“发酵的酸面团”。这种个性化设置的搜索引擎叫“searchroll”
要创建一个searchroll，先登陆Rollyo网站(rollyo.com)，你可以设定多达25个你认为和某个主题最为相关的网站。如果你不想手动输入要加进searchroll中的网站，也可以把浏览器里的书签上传到Rollyo，只挑选你要用的网址就行了。
创建一个searchroll后，你就可以反复用它来搜索与该主题相关的任何信息，其他访问Rollyo网站并对相同主题感兴趣的人也可以使用。同样，你也可以利用别人已经创建的searchroll。如果通过一个searchroll搜索仍然找不到自己想要的信息，只需点击一下就能把搜索范围扩大到整个互联网。
每一个searchroll都有自己的网络地址，因此你可以直接找到它，而不必在整个Rollyo网站中跋山涉水般寻找，你也可以把这个地址用电子邮件寄给别人。你甚至可以把searchroll加到Firefox网络浏览器工具栏的搜索引擎的下拉列表中去，这样不必先登陆Rollyo网站就能找到它在哪儿。
比如，我创建了一个关于我热爱的波士顿红袜棒球队(Boston Red Sox)的searchroll，里面有我最喜爱的25个关于波士顿红袜的网站，你不妨在rollyo.com/wmossberg/red_sox_nation上试一试。
Rollyo也包括由一些 “高级玩家”(High Rollers)创建的searchroll，这些是各个不同领域中的名人或专家。例如女演员黛布拉?梅辛(Debra Messing)创建了一个关于在线购物的searchroll，设计师戴安?冯?弗斯腾伯格(Diane Von Furstenberg)创建了关于时装的searchroll，专栏作家兼活动分子亚里安娜?赫芬顿(Arianna Huffington)创建了一个政治博客的searchroll。
并不是每一次搜索都要用到Rollyo，但如果你经常在几个特定的主题范围内搜索，那就值得使用或创建一个关于这个领域的searchroll。
Pubsub则是完全不同的另一种工具，它能持续更新与某个特定主题相关的信息，搜索内容包括博客、被称为新闻组的在线讨论、SEC档案和新闻稿。
在一般的搜索中，你输入一个关键词，然后搜索引擎尝试在网址索引中找到与之匹配的项目，这是一个一次性的过程。而在PubSub搜索中，关键字会持续生效，搜索引擎会一直在不断变化的、从PubSub资源中收集到的数据流中寻找匹配项目。即使在输入关键字过后好几个月，只要匹配项出现，它就会在PubSub中跳出来通知你。
PubSub自称是一个“匹配引擎”，并宣称自己是“前景光明的”、“未来的”的搜索引擎──在可能尚未出现的数据中查找。比如，我去年夏天通过PubSub进行了一次搜索，直到昨天它还在报告最新搜索结果，这些信息在我开始搜索那会儿还没有上网。
要创建一个PubSub搜索器──公司称之为“预订”，先登录pubsub.com，输入一个或多个你想让Pubsub持续搜索匹配项的关键字。你可以有很多预订项，全部免费。
你可以访问PubSub的网站来查询结果，也可以通过下载一个“侧栏”模块把PubSub加到你的浏览器中，这个模块会在一个特殊窗口中列出PubSub查询的结果，一旦发现新的匹配项就会通知你。这些侧栏适用于Windows IE以及Windows、Macintosh和Linux上的Firefox。
PubSub也能把搜索限制在某些类型的资源上，比如，只限于新闻稿。PubSub希望在未来逐渐增加更多类型的资源。
一些主要的搜索引擎正在实验跟Rollyo类似的模式，你可以在某些管理博客概要和新闻网站的“RSS读者”程序中实现PubSub的某些功能。但Rollyo和PubSub十分好用，值得一看。
