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February 10, 2005Become.com - First LookFirst Impression, Pre-Search Become.com reminds me of a yellow Froogle. Lean, mean, clean... all about the search results. I (heart) minimalism, but I'm also hoping to find at least a hint of new features. The Authority On Authority? Michael Yang claims that "Google basic approach... was highly limiting" and the new Become.com ranking algorithm overcomes "many of the short comings" of the PageRank algorithm. He might be right. I was not expecting a beta search engine to have such a good grasp of authority on Day One. The "usual suspects" are not always in the top spot, but they are usually in the top ten. (Compare it to the early MSN Search beta, which had problems ranking ebay.com in the Top 100 for the generic "auctions" keyword.) This is all the more impressive considering Become.com does not have the resources of a Microsoft. What can they do with a flood of eyeballs and a slick feedback system? Then again, the latest Google update might have overcome some of the shortcomings of PageRank, too. Even the new MSN Search is starting to look more authoritative, maybe even turning some knobs a bit too far. No matter. A diversity of authority algorithms is good for searchers. What I like about Become.com, based on my limited testing, is they have a interesting blend of authority sites within many search results. It is like the BecomeBot is saying, "instead of showing you ten uber-authority sites that are all the same, I'm going to show you several different kinds of authority sites." Then again, it is now past midnight, maybe I am reading to much into this. I would not want to put words in the BecomeBot's mouth based on less than fifty searches. I need more searches. I need more sleep. more later... To-Be-Fixed-Soon? Clustering - it does not look like they are grouping multiple results from the same domain. I initially thought this had to do with sub-domains (i.e. About.com), a common dilemma for search engines, but I've since found multiple deep links from the same site, even the same folder within the same site, all appearing for the same keyword. Don't get me wrong, it is not bad. To-Be-Fixed-Soon! I did find one true bug, a real doozy, and quickly reported it via the feedback form. No sense airing the dirty laundry here, we've all made those kinds of mistakes. My hope is someone is monitoring the feedback form, and they fix this glitch before anyone else sees it. Final Thoughts, Post-Search The beta is solid and I'm sure Michael and Yeogirl had several tricks up their sleeves when they chose to build a shopping search engine instead of another shopping comparison site. Congrats to the team, and best of luck.
Become.com - First Look
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