Trexy offers fresh look at search

 

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By Matt Whipp

Posted on 26 Oct 2006 at 15:44

You'd have thought search had pretty much been cracked. Google pretty much nailed it a few years back and has since been tweaking its algorithm to perfection so that everything we'll ever need will be presented through a Google search result.

Well, there's a new kid on the block: a young goat named Trexy using technology that uses search trails to make it quicker to get to the information you're after as well as opening up new areas that Google and other search engines aren't privvy to.

The principal works like this: download the Trexy toolbar - which works with IE and Firefox - and start a search. Once you have arrived at the destination where the information you're after resides, Trexy records that as a trail.

If you ever need that information again, you simply visit Trexy where you'll find your trail and be able to go direct to the destination page, rather than have to go through the whole search process from scratch.

Of course, you could just bookmark that page. But with Trexy you can share trails and can access other people's trails so that you can save yourself a tortuous search for something if it has already been found by someone else.

But then you can use del.ico.us. Megan Hamilton, Director and CMO at Trexy said that this is also true. But Trexy takes the leg-work out of making shared bookmarks useful. 'With del.ico.us you have to tag each bookmark, and there's no guarantee that how one person describes a bookmark would be the same as how someone else would. Trexy uses not just key words, but what people do with those key words in a search, and that behaviour means that trails are more relevant.'

Hamilton said that Trexy can also use trails to delve into 'invisible databases' that would stop the search bots of Google, Yahoo! and the like. She is referring to the search features on websites which while sometimes only offering a search of the same website can also search an entirely different database - for example, patent applications, or legal records. One example she quoted is the British and Irish Legal Information Institute (BAILII) where legal records, case histories and other information are queried through a search box on the website, although the database itself isn't published on the site.

Trexy currently has trails accessing information on more than 3,000 different databases, and the service has a simple facility to add more as users encounter them. It currently indexes around three-quarters of a million trails and its toolbar has been downloaded more than 10,000 times and installed in 35 countries. However, it is still embryonic, as the project only started in March.

Most recently it has launched a registration service so that users can log in from any computer and access their trails. There is also a calendar function so that if you remember a page you found last week, you can visit the trails you created on that day.

As search trails grow in number and use, Trexy will be able to introduce a reputation system as to how well used and how well thought of each trail is. It will then surface these more well-trodden paths as being more relevant in Trexy searches. And it's the trail metaphor that gives rise to Trexy's goat logo.

Trexy is privately funded. It makes money through a sponsored results section displayed in much the same way as Google's. Hamilton told us that 'We've already been approached by some big search companies'. And asked how she felt about a potential buy out, she responded, 'Well, that would be nice'. However, she said she wanted to have the company operating as a going concern before considering that option.