i've made a fairly significant change to voyeurism's search engine.
after trying out a couple of engines - neither of which provided truly satisfactory results - i've decided to take advantage of Google's launch today of its Custom Search Engine service.
the result is vento - a loose reference to the sweeping speed and scope which i hope the search results will be brought to you :-P
vento is - as i bill it in the box over in the column on the right - a 'customsearch powered by Google'. i've configured vento not to return its search results simply from within sites which i've authored (eg, my homepage, my wikis and this blog), but also to include hits from other sites in the wider web as well. however, my sites (and others which i've chosen to give preference to) will receive a slightly heavier weighting than they normally would (which is not to say that they will be at, or even near, the top of the searchpile).
every Tom, Dick and Harry - on, and off, the web - has slightly different cultural baggage and agenda, and Google's Custom Search Engines (vento included) are a tacit acknowledgment of this. on balance, i think this is a good thing, because at least the biases are acknowledged, instead of being swept under the carpet. the assumption of course is that the more experts contribute to these Custom Search Engines, the more authoritative (and therefore, preferable / useful?) their results might be. at any rate, within vento you have the option of running the search a second time, using regular search weightings.
i'm supporting this potentially controversial initiative because i see it as another way to contribute to the semantic web.
this is because i'm also configuring vento to support tags (or, what Google terms 'refinement labels').
for the time being, i've only included a few high-level domains and a handful of tags to vento. some trial searches, however, reveal that it's already picking up other tags from other sites - i'm not sure the extent to which (if at all) these Custom Search Engines are able to pick up existing folksonomic tags (such as those associated with technorati), but that sure would make a lot of sense, i think.
and here's where you come in, if you are so inclined, and have the time. over here, you can sign up as a collaborator on vento, and can thereby suggest sites and tags for inclusion in its search algorithms specifically, and in the algorithms of the wider semantic web more generally :-)
if this is getting you excited, a good place to start is Google's own suggested protocols for these refinement labels.
have fun contributing to the semantic web :-)
Technorati Tags: folksonomy, Web 2.0
