If you are not familiar with it, Delicious.com is what is called a social bookmarking site.  This means that users can save bookmarks on the site, organize them according to topics by using tags, and then share them with others.  The interesting thing about Delicious.com is that as people bookmark and share sites they come across, those sites gain in popularity.

This post, however, was written to deal with the searching capabilities of Delicious.com and how they compare to the oh so famous search engine, Google.

It occurred to me the other day, while researching for another post I was working on, that perhaps there are more research options out there than Google.  I then hit up good ol’ Delicious.com to see what I could find.  The results, although not perfect, were surprisingly sufficient!

Basically, Delicious and Google base their search result listings on different things.  If I am correct, Google’s search results are based upon “three distinct phases: spidering the web to find and read web pages, indexing the web pages found and responding to user queries to produce a set of ranked results.” (quoted from article entitled How Google produces relevant search results – Indexing and PageRank explained).  Delicious on the other hand is based more on user bookmarking habits and user tagging.

All of this means that both sites come up with search results.  The results are different and they are based on different things.  The quality of your search experience will depend on the topic of the search and even the terms you choose to use in your search.  I am hearing that Yahoo, using methods that Delicious uses, may be looking to change the way we search online.  Hold onto your seats, we may be into another search engine battle!

What about you?  Have you ever ventured off of the well-beaten Google search path and tried sites like Delicious for your searching needs?  What site do you prefer?  Let me know in the comments!

I was poking through some of the technology blogs I’m following via RSS in Google Reader and I came across an article highlighting a new feature Yahoo is getting ready to release.  Yahoo, you remember them?  I know Google and Bing get a lot of press but Yahoo’s still around ya know!  In fact, Yahoo is probably the primary search engine I use, still!

Anyway, this new feature is called “Search Pad.”  It appears to serve a similar purpose that Google Notes attempted to serve.  Yahoo, equipped with this “Search Pad” feature is supposed to tell if you are trying to research something, ask if you want to take notes (remember the sites you come across), and allow you to make notes by each site you visit.  You can also save the notes with your Yahoo account (you have one, right?).

Usually, I’ll use several methods of saving sites for research purposes, one of which is using a Google Doc to save links and notes.  I’m wondering if Yahoo has come up with a better solution.  Perhaps we’ll find out when it’s released!  Meanwhile, here’s a video Yahoo has released highlighting, well, the highlights of the tool: