A9 - I am really impressed

[ppayne]

On a lark, I jumped over to A9, Amazon's search engine which uses Google results, presumably with a higher chance of hitting Amazon pages. I didn't expect much when I did a search for Japanese bikini idol Yoko Matsugane, but I was knocked off my chair when I saw the excellent results that came up: standard ranked results on the left, and pictures of my search target on the right. HOW did they come up with such a great idea and one-up Google? It's the first innovation I've seen in searching in a long time.

http://a9.com/

I also tried searching for myself, Peter Payne. My blog was at the top spot (that was nice, although who is searching with A9?), and it also showed various pictures of me on the right, along with pictures of my father (also named Peter Payne) and every historical Peter Payne there ever was.

Man, that's cool!

[ctabuk]

I'm really sorry to do this, but Google has copied it
www.images.google.com
Good post though David

[kservik]

We know Google got image search, the point was showing them on the same results page.

[jestep]

http://a9.com/

and

www.images.google.com

are not even remotely the same thing. A9 is the normal google search engine, except is has a thumbnail of the website as well.

[decaff]

The A9 Engine from Amazon is really a demonstration of how well they are able to integrate "contextual content delivery"...so when you query for "Yoko Matsugane" they are going to not only bring in the Google results ... but query ... Google Images or their own images database and set this along side the SERPs..

On the very right hand side of any SERPs page at A9 .. you can click on additional links that can bring in data about Movies that "Yoko Matsugane" may have appeared in ... Books...Reference ...etc..very cool way to consolidate results .. rather then just presenting text based SERPs with some PPC ads...

I think that Amazon (A9) will be rolling out some sort of real production search engine in the future...God knows...they have the technical skill in servers and technology plus the bandwidth and storage capabilities to pull it off...

[mlevenhagen]

Oh No!! There's another Matt Levenhagen in the world!!!

I see they've (of course) integrated the site info/ Alexa Ranking as well...

[ctabuk]

http://a9.com/

and

www.images.google.com

are not even remotely the same thing. A9 is the normal google search engine, except is has a thumbnail of the website as well.

I hate to dissagree, but when I searched my keywords the results were identical both showing photo's that are in my site, if I'm doing something daft please tell me. Search Term 'Right to Buy'

[ReviewGolf.com]

Looks like Google engine under A9's hood.
Not much new all around.

[gogoshire]

I love A9! I've been using it for a little while, actually. It has all of the great amazon.com features like remembering recent searches and giving recommendations (better than Google's "similar pages"), and it has drag and drop for bookmarks - I like the idea of keeping my bookmarks online. When I travel or use another computer, I don't have my bookmarks. Online bookmarks is an innovative concept.

As far as the comment about "google's engine under A9's hood," this is partly true, but not the whole truth. A9 does use web search and image search results enhanced by Google, but also from Amazon.com, GuruNet, IMDb, etc. There are many engines working under the hood. The biggest downfall that I can is its lack of speed.

A9 will take off eventually. It's a smarter way of doing things.

[KeithO]

With Google implementing the 'save search history' functionality, its really not an original idea now.