Site Attacked

Unfortunately, our host has been the victim of attacks specifically designed to disrupt service and reduce the availability of their client’s websites.  Having developed web applications for a decade, we’re very farmiliar with these types of attacks.  It’s pretty pathetic that someone would do this kind of thing, and it’s disappointing that there’s not much that can be done. 

However, there is some hope that the people behind this get caught.  Hopefully for their sake, they’re aware that attacks such as this are treated as federal crimes and are investigated by the FBI.

The Search with Srchr Badge

The badge is part of what makes Srchr what we call a “search aggregator” (and the first one, if not the only one we know of.)  Meta-search is part of the story…but not the whole story.  How is search aggregation different?  The key is in the way we give content publishers and search engines a voice, and that voice is the Srchr Badge.

How does it work?  Simple…just like an RSS badge.  By clicking on the Srchr badge, you can add a search engine to your Srchr home page.  Have you ever been to a news site, or blog that had great content, but then never went back?  Maybe you signed up for their RSS feed but then got pummeled with tons of mediocre content so you canned it.  Have you ever come across an niche auction site, but then forgot about it (and you just keep using Ebay anyway)?  This is where the Srchr badge comes in…it gives content providers a voice.

Why is this important?  A few years ago, publishers were incredulous at the concept of RSS.  Why disperse content without getting the benefit of eyeballs, they thought.  Now it’s everywhere, and we think the same thing will happen with search.  Furthermore, as bloggers gain a deeper archive of material from years of postings, search becomes even more important to their ability to keep their readers happy.  For content providers and services it levels the playing field…what if Yahoo auctions could get a piece of Ebay’s search traffic?  With Srchr, it could have.

How do you get your own Srchr badge?  The easiest way is to type your domain in the “Search this site too” box near the top left of the screen.  If your site is OpenSearch ready, we will auto-detect it and use it…if not, you’re stuck with a site-specific Google search.  If you then hit the “Srch” button, a new Srch-able will appear on your screen for that domain.  Click the “Edit” link on the bar for that module and you’ll see the text box you can copy the code for.

Here are a few examples from our favorite sites, blogs, and services:

Techcrunch:

Read/WriteWeb:

NextTag:

The New York Times:

Google’s new cross-vertical focus…it’s about time!

As anybody reading this probably knows by now, Google has made some huge front-end changes to its search interface…and there’s a big emphasis on spanning verticals.  We knew we were on the right track  

The direction they’re going in makes sense…the major competitors already have similar offerings, and a lot of the smaller niche engines provide some mixture of verticals as well.  We’re also pretty sure that they’ll incorporate additional features that we and niche engines out there have as well.

More of our thoughts on Google’s direction and details about our own features to come…

Latest release bugs

Sorry to those of you who had trouble using the site the last day or two, we made another major release (more on that later) which had a bug unfortunately. If you can get into the site, but don’t see “Google News” or “Yahoo News” srchables then click here for Google:
and here for Yahoo:

Big Release!

As you can see, we’ve been working hard since the new year on this huge release.  A few of the features are:

• The interface is customizable without logging in (!)
• Easier to search your favorite sites (just type the domain name in the box at the top left)
• Page through results using the arrows at the top of each srch-able module

We’ve also added our privacy policy and terms of use…the usual legal stuff.  Keep the questions and suggestions coming!  We’ll go in to more details about these and other features in the coming days.

Happy New Year!

Better late than never We’ve already been busy so far this year with a variety of updates. In lieu of a full-fledged browser toolbar, we decided to integrate with the search bar which is now available in both Firefox 2+ and IE 7+ (booya!) If you’re using one of those browsers just click the link that says “Add this page to my search bar” and Srchr will be added to the drop-down list of search engines in the upper right corner of your browser window. If you want, you can click the link on more than one of your Srchr pages (web, video, news, etc.) and category will appear as a different search engine in your search bar.  Don’t forget, if you’re logged in, you can create your own custom page.

Besides that, we’ve made a few minor updates like changing the way favicons are displayed (thanks to Jed from Eventful for noticing an issue.)

Finally, I can’t help but point to another mention of Srchr in the blog world — this time from the master of search himself, John Battelle! We’re always excited when we get a mention, but think this one is especially significant.  We’re proud to be one of the top search engines of 2007!  Thanks to everyone who’s made Srchr a huge success so far, and here’s to a fantastic 2007.

Another shout out

Thanks to Zedomax for their quick profile of Srchr…very cool blog, definitely one to add to your list!

Another update

Thanks to Jed from eventful.com for his post on Srchr! Also check out Dexly.

The redesigned site is (finally) here

It took longer than expected, but the redesigned site is now live to rave reviews.  Special thanks to Nat at bigcode.com for the help!  The next projects include a browser toolbar as well as “featured srch-ables”…stay tuned and keep the feedback coming…

Updates

There will be a redesign coming soon (yeah!)  In the meantime, mini-updates continue.