web searching … back to basics… finally

Google has started a new search engine called searchmash that they are using to test new concepts. Personally, one of the best features of searchmash is the absence of advertisements. That’s right, no ads. Employing a clean, simple interface, there’s also no sign of Google unless you view the privacy policy or terms of service statement. The engine appears to run using Google’s search algorithm, though I haven’t seen any verification of this — even Google seems to be keeping quiet about what the site can do except to say that it’s being used to test user interfaces etc… The features of the engine can be found here. My favorite ability of the site is a box on the right of the screen that lets you quickly change your search results from web to wikipedia, blogs, images, and videos that play on the search results page. So far I’ve been very impressed with the site.

To make searchmash your default search engine from the firefox address bar just open “about:config” and search for the “keyword.url” variable. Change this value to:

http://www.searchmash.com/search/

now when you type something into the address bar you will be taken to searchmash’s results for that phrase. You can do this with any search engine or search box on the web, because Firefox is awesome!

Charitable Searching

I just found a new search engine called GoodTree. It donates half the revenue generated by sponsored links (that’s how search engines make money) to charities that you select. We generate ~ $0.01 per search, a paltry sum? Consider that in March of 2006 over 2.4 billion internet searches were performed using the top engines. The beauty part: GoodTree’s searches are powered by Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft. So you’re still getting the same results (sometimes more) and you’re doing something good for others at the same time. You do have to start an account with GoodTree (just supply an e-mail address) in order for them to track how much searching you’re doing, this is how they determine how much of their total revenue goes to your charities.

To make this all even easier, you can utilize a little-known function of FireFox that searches directly from your address bar. Just type in anything you want to search for and your browser will do a Google “I’m Feeling Lucky” search on the term and take you to that page. You can change this action to search with GoodTree by changing your “about:config” file like so:

In the FireFox address bar type: “about:config”. In the “Filter” dialog type: “keyword”. Two lines of text will appear, keyword.enable and keyword.URL. Don’t worry about what these are (if it’s not obvious). Make sure keyword.enable = True, double-click it if it isn’t, and double-click keyword.URL and paste the following into the dialog box: http://www.goodtree.com/search?query=

That’s all it takes, now you’re a socially conscious web-browser!