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A9 Offers Search Results From Five Sources
Friday, September 17, 2004
A9, the search engine from Amazon.com, has relaunched its search
engine. It now offers search results from several different sources,
including the IMDB and of course, Amazon.com.
I decided to search for Duke Ellington. “Duke Ellington”
brought about 156,000 results (less than half the results the same
search brings at Google. So note while the A9 search may be Enhanced
by Google, it ain’t the same as Google.) There are display
switches on the right to open new panels of search results. Panels
are available for book results (which adds another panel of search
results, this time from Amazon), image results ("enhanced by
Google” again), the IMDB (Internet Movie Database), and a reference
page powered by GuruNet. I was able to open all these panels and
have them be fairly readable, but I have a large screen.
You can have any combination of the panels open; you don’t
have to look at all of them at once. You’ll notice that there
are some other switches on the right. History, if you’re signed
in, shows your search history. Bookmarks, if you’re signed
in, shows your list of bookmarks. And Diary gives you the option
to take notes and annotate pages.
In addition to all this, A9 also offers a toolbar (requires both
IE 5.5 and an Amazon account) and a Discover feature, where URLs
are suggested to you based on your searching and browsing history.
I like the panel implementation; I think it works well. I’d
like to see Amazon take more advantage of its own content, offering
more than just material from inside books, for example. And a news
search panel would go really nicely here. Worth a look.
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