@ the beginning of the week, Google@Omgili was reviews on ReadWriteWeb – since then, we received many feedbacks (that we love). The most noticeable input was to incorporate a real-time factor into the service. Now, real-time is very trendy today (where real-time is a synonym for Twitter) and it is mostly used for checking out the buzz about a brand, or a service. I use Twitter search to see if someone wrote something interesting about Omgili, or if Gmail is down for everyone. We wanted to create a service that will appeal to a wider audience, and we think we did.
Yes, it was fast (about 3 days of development), but we created a section on Google@Omgili that is utilizing the real-time factor into a useful service for everyone. On the left of the screen you can see an ongoing update of Tweets about your query, but on the right, you get the current popular links everybody is talking about. The score of the link is determined by the number of users that tweeted about this link and the time lapse between Tweets. Links that are being tweeted very fast will rise fast even higher than a link with more tweets. The time-frame of the calculation changes according to the query popularity. If the topic is “hot” then the time frame we take into consideration may be the past minute. If the topic isn’t very hot right now the time-frame will grow wider. Keeping the page open will automatically update the links and tweets continually in real-time with the latest tweets, trends and hot links.
The service will give you an indication of the hottest sites about the topic you were searching, in real-time as they are being propagated among internet users. So if you want to know what’s going on with North Korea, you will get the latest sources that people are recommending on their tweets.
As usual we would love to get your feedback, and add/remove features accordingly. We hope you will find this new feature useful.
Ran Geva,
Omgili CEO
In the past two weeks since the last post about Google@Omgili we have been getting a lot of great feedback about how to make Google@Omgili better. We implemented the best ideas we got and made the service a lot better. We liked it so much, that we decided it deserves its own domain name. From now on you can reach Google@Omgili by going to GOmgili.com
Please keep sending us ideas and feedback – we strive on making our services better.
Thank you,
Ran Geva
Omgili CEO
This post is not a desperate call for you to start using Omgili as the title might suggest. This post is about an experiment we are conducting. As most of you are searching Google to find information, we created a new service, named Google@Omgili, that integrates Omgili into Google in a manner that should make searching Google even better. The look & feel of the search engine should look very similar to Google’s, but it also includes some unobtrusive useful features.
The first and most noticeable feature is the ability to find forum discussions about the results Google returns. This way you can find more people that are interested in the same topics as you, and also provide more in-depth discussions about the topic you are researching.
The second feature is the integration of most of the services Omgili provides into the interface. You can easily search for Discussions, Q&A or Reviews by clicking on the appropriate menu link.
We also made it much easier to access results from other Google services such as Blogs, News, Videos search and even Newsgroups (Remember Dejanews) search. Notice the ability to sort the results by Date or Relevancy from the top menu link.
OK, back to the opening line. We know that moving from your default search provider (Google) is almost an impossible mission – everyone uses Google because the service is a synonym to information search. I personally found that if I don’t see the Google color scheme and logo on the results page, I just don’t trust those results. The question is why?
That’s the reason we are providing you with an interface very similar to Google’s with search results from Google itself. We made searching other services a breeze and we provide more information without really cluttering the user interface. The experiment asks why then won’t you change your default search engine to Google@Omgili? We want your feedback as we will continue to change the interface accordingly and share our insights about the process.
We created a Feedback & Suggestion page on Crowdsound.com so you are encouraged to participate, share your ideas and spread the word about this initiative.
So, why won’t you use me?
We are very happy to announce our developers API. The Omgili API allows you to develop applications that leverage the unique data we collect from millions of discussions across the web. The API gives developers access to the data on Omgili Reviews, Omgili Q&A, Omgili Discussions search and Omgili Buzz.
The data is accessible via simple GET request followed by a simple XML response. The API is available for non-commercial use and each user is limited to 1,000 requests per day. Please contact us if you would like that limit extended or if you would like to request any additional functionality.
You can learn more about the API by reading the documentation.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Ran Geva
Omgili CEO
We are happy to release “Omgili Stream“, the only service that updates you in real-time about new discussions from boards, forums, and other discussion based platforms. Searching on “Omgili Stream” will first give you the most relevant results for your query in the past 48 hours, but will also regularly update you with the newest discussions as our crawlers discover them.
The way it works is that our many (hundreds of) crawlers continuously scan for discussions threads on tens of thousands forums and social sites. Once they find a discussion matching your query from the past 48 hours, they will update the results page in real-time with the new discussion. All you have to do is to keep the results open and be updated with the latest results. You can save the results for later reference or even Tweet them.
As mentioned, the stream is continuously updated with all the matching discussions threads we find, but you can also filter out certain types of discussions. Using the “Filter Options” you can choose to see discussions matching certain parameters such as language, minimum number of replies, or by where your query must appear in the discussion (Title, topic or replies).
Some notes about Omgili “Real-Time” vs. Twitter Real-Time search
Twitter is an amazing service with the true meaning of Real-Time search, showing you tweets as they are posted. We give the term “Real-Time Search” a more loose interpretation. “Omgili Stream” returns discussions about the same time our crawlers find them, provided that the discussion is recent enough. That’s why you may see a “new” result from yesterday. Also, many times a discussion may span over days, so even if the discussion started a week ago, the latest post may have been from today or yesterday.
We hope you enjoy the service and use it to be updated about the now. As usual your feedback is valuable and highly appreciated. You can use our “contact us” form or reply to this blog post.
Ran Geva,
Omgili CEO
