KOSMIX v/s Google

Introduction:

Search engines play an important role in the age of information, speed and quality, when everybody needs right information, at the right moment in fractions of a second. Though, electronic information contents have gone beyond text to image, audio, video and various other

formats and being uploaded over the Internet for public or restricted use. In order to capture all these contents in different formats search engines are working on cutting edge technologies and coming up with one or other specialties. In the emergence of various search engines the KOSMIX come up with its unique feature of systematic categorization of web. KOSMIX as described through our earlier post entitled Does KOSMIX challenge the Google or Librarians?, is undoubtedly has been launched with the aim to “tell more about something”. In proper sense it is a browse engine or more appropriately we can defined it as an explore engine which has already revolutionized the searching on the web. It was created by Anand Rajaraman and Venky Harinarayan, who studied at Stanford University along with Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin.

KOSMIX has been known as a challenger to Google even when it was not fully developed. KOSMIX has an incredibly long and challenging road ahead of it if wants to compete against Google. The other side Google is the foundation stone in the era of search engines, itself facing the challenge from these new generation search engines, when these new emerging search engines are researching on half explored services of existing search engines to make their products unique and revolutionary.

Here, we are trying to put light on the KOSMIX v/s well known giant the great Google in this information age.

Indexing and searching:

KOSMIX is containing all features which a search engine should need to have but unique way of searching which separates it from other search engines. Google is a Giant but sometime it gives frustrations while searching. It has been observed that sometime it diverts users from the actual topic on which he/she started searching and reached somewhere else. Google gives high ranked (ranking given by Google itself) documents as result on a specific term or phrase whereas KOSMIX gives the documents which give more information on a specific term or phrase. The basics of output in both these search engines are completely different. KOSMIX gathers contents from across the web in most systematic and organized way in and categorize them in different subject categories.

While searching for “e-learning objects”, Google has given output from web pages only and to get results from blog, images, video and news categories, searched one by one separately. We put the same query in KOSMIX and received output in boxes with link to explore further option. It compiles the output from different sources, webpages, videos, images, wikies, blogs, and conversational entries and suggests various other related links too.

KOSMIX is known as an explore engine which discovers the accurate topics related to the term searched for. Accurate and relevant searching is the most exceptional key of KOSMIX, which work like a boon for information seekers and learners who were dithering from the Google due to low precision value. It does not displayed own published contents but it fetch the results from other search engines, like Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Flicker etc.

The above table shows, though KOSMIX is only 6 months infant but already challenging Google in many of its services. Since Google has already achieved the greatness and become a giant in the business, therefore, it is quite true that KOSMIX has to go long way to compete with the Great Google.

Comment:

The limitation of KOSMIX is that it gives 4-5 results from each section and to explore further it takes us to other search engines like “more from the Google” or “more from the Youtube”. We found that KOSMIX gives results from the first result page of other sources, but organized them in such a way that most of the times it seems the output is given by a professional on searched term.

After moving away from result of KOSMIX with the option ‘more from …….’, this takes the users to another search engines and after sometime user forget that he/she was using KOSMIX. Then again flat one dimensional listing of search output come in front of us.

Suggestion:
Instead of compiling and displaying one page entries, KOSMIX should think to increase number of entries to make good grip on user’s psyche. KOSMIX should have not let the user moves to other search engines.

• It should look up to search within the result option.
• It should have to reveal the different sub-subjects categories under different subject categories, e.g. under which subject category the term ‘library’ appears.
• There is no help option to guide the user in searching or browsing the KOSMIX. It should provide some links to refer the user to explore further options.
• Since, KOSMIX is not allowing users to search/browse in one format (content’s format) only, like video, image, blog, web or other organized segments. It should give the liberty to user to search with in the single format (images or videos etc.) from the categorized contents.
• It should suggest correct spelling while entering of wrong spelling, and also refers towards more sought terms to search the web.
• While searching it should show the browsing path to reach at that term or phrase and also show the different subject categories containing the same term or phrase.

Endnotes:

KOSMIX is guide to web, user can browse the topics in the different subject categories. To give accurate and more relevant search, whatever users want over the Internet it categorizing whole web into different categories, that helps to provide automatic indexing of contents that makes searching more intuitive and result looks like given by an expert on related to searched topic. And one can send the links of search results through the email, this way helping the user to organize the information for further use. RightHealth and MeeHive are the services those have already given the new way of web organization and searching. Finding relevant information from the web with highest precision value KOSMIX has already sent the example but it would be more advisable if it stresses upon federated search and give long output from its own organized contents instead of restricted it from 4 or 5 entries of different segments. KOSMIX has all the ingredients and potential to challenge the Google if it adopts constant improvement and develop it to facilitate the academics.