September 20th, 2004

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Internet
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I’m Vaguely Offended by Amazon’s A9

As you’ve probably heard, Amazon has launched a search engine called A9.com. You can read about why they think you should use A9 here. When I try out a new search engine, I always search for my name. This ego-search started years ago, and provides a decent baseline to evaluate a search engine’s effectiveness. After all, what more do I know about than me?

By default, A9 shows text and image results on the same search results page. When I searched for my name on my PowerBook (using Firefox), I was amused to note the first two image results. Oddly, they don’t show up when I search using my Windows desktop machine. I’ve taken a screenshot for posterity, and zoomed in on the offending region:

If you can’t make those out, the titles of the first two images are “Cumulative Incidence Curve, Masturbation” and “M/F Genitals During Coitus”. I did reference both those images at some point, but how come they get top priority?

Comments: 3 Responses so far

Matt Clements
September 20th, 2004
8:26 pm

That is the number one image search on my Windows machine. I kind of like the UI for A9 with the different buttons on the side for different types of results.

[Reply]

julie
September 21st, 2004
3:09 am

If you do an image search via A9 the ” M/F genitals during coitus” picture comes back with this result

Guess you have to be careful what you link to.

(I’m having a good laugh)

[Reply]

Rick
September 21st, 2004
7:23 am

I think I might just use A9 for a while for searching. I tried some searches in both Google and A9 and at the moment, A9 has turned out to get more results for some searches and more pertinent information on some in comparison to Google. I wonder how this new engine will fare against the google juggernaut…..

[Reply]

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