Become com Zooms In On Desired Results

Become.com Zooms In On Desired Results

By: Doug Caverly
2006-07-24

Become.com is making strides forward in its "mission to help people make ideal buying decisions." Input anything into the engine, and it will offer back results classified as product reviews, buying guides, discussion forums, or product details. Become has dubbed this filtering action "Search Zoom."

Brian Smith of Search Engine Watch believes "this is an extremely useful feature." He wrote about the results of one query. "My original search results for 'Aston Martin Vanquish' (yes, I'm obsessed) contained 171,573 results vs. the 51 returns for discussion forums (which I really wanted). This is a search engine starting to answer my questions as opposed to just returning a bunch of irrelevant results."

Smith interviewed Jon Glick, the senior director of product search at Become. Glick explained some of the thought behind Become's current setup. "If you're a general purpose search engine, you can't have 30 buttons across the top. As a vertical search engine, we just wanted to limit the choices to the decisions that people who need to make a buying decision need. We have a more constrained problem. We can help people in ways that Google as a general search engine can't."

Become increases its user-friendliness by offering spelling suggestions as you type in your search term. In keeping with the theme of high-performance (and exorbitantly priced) cars, I entered "Lamborghini Murcielago." The suggestions evolved at every keystroke, growing more and more accurate. By the time I'd reached "Lamborghini Mu," there was only one remaining choice - the correct one.

In other Become news, Smith noted that the company "is syndicating Shopping.com's price comparison listings to supplement its own . . . there's already a relationship. Shopping.com recently added a 'Buying Guides' section. This could be 227x better with Become's assistance."

Become.com is doing some undeniably interesting things.

Become.com

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View All Articles by Doug Caverly

About the Author:
Doug is a staff writer for SearchNewz, WebProNews, InternetFinancialNews, and SecurityProNews.