Swicki is my current search tool. Having given it a workout, I’m pleasantly surprised.
First, the techies over at Swicki resolved a nasty presentation problem that David Terrar had kindly pointed out. My site design can be limiting at times so it was good to see the developers taking time out to fix up the code for me.
If you’re faced with the same problem, ping me a note and I’ll show you the fix (the emails’ too long to put in here and it in part relies on an as yet undocumented feature – or so I’m told.)
Second, I like what I see going on. As people visit the site and search, the emphasis in the tag ‘cloud’ changes. I can fool it by making repeated searches on the same topic but over time, that won’t matter because the number of pages and topics will expand to the point where only truly important search topics take precedence. That’s extremely useful because it means I can skew content according to what people are looking for.
Third, I really like the comparison view showing a Swicki search compared to a Google search. Google remains extremely important as the premier general search tool. However, I see tools like Swicki as adding value to topic specific sites (like this) because the search is narrowly focused to issues of reader importance.
Fourth, I like the fact I can remove sites form the search results when they are completely irrelevant – as was the case when I did a search on ‘arctic systems .’
Fifth, the searches pull up relevant information most times and are a vast improvement on a straight Google search. I’ve no idea how the people at Swicki do it but it’s seriously good stuff.
But…isn’t there always? I’d like to restrict Swicki to presenting a given number of search terms – say 20-30, but retaining the ability to click through to see all searches. I’ve fed that back to the developers. I also think the side by side comparison works well but the design of how stuff is presented needs cleaning up a bit. At times, information is cramped for space. Maybe a slight adjustment to the size of fonts presented?
Overall, I’d recommend taking a close look at Swicki and seeing what it offers you. You might be surprised. And since it’s free, you’ve little to lose.
