Custom Search Guide – Directory of CSEs
October 25, 2006 by DazzlinDonna · 1 Comment
I see Google’s CSE (Custom Search Engine) product as the new Directory 2.0. Until now, human-edited directories were the natural medium for users who wanted a human-optimized guide to the web. A CSE, however, combines the best aspects of a directory and a search engine. Users are now programmed to use search rather than navigating through a directory structure, but a search engine generally gives the user much more than she wants – including spam and non-relevant results. A directory is much more likely to supply the user with precise, relevant results, but she may have to follow a lengthy tree-structured path to arrive at those results. The CSE, however, can be tailored to a specific user-intent, utilizing only human-approved sources, brought together with the ease of a Google search box.
