Amazon Unleashes A9 Search Engine

Amazon last night opened their doors to A9 (http://www.A9.com), Amazon's answer to the search engine war as of late.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS:

A9 isn't that bad actually. The result are similar in nature to Google and the layout is very clean. What I really like about it is that you can click on a book search (right hand side) and find any books related to the keywords/websites that you were searching for. Hopefully in the future options to display CDs, DVDs and other product will appear.

If you log in using your Amazon login info, A9 keeps record of what sites are new to the SERPs and your search history. In the beginning all sites are labeled as [NEW] but the label disappears when you do a search for that keyword again or hit refresh. I imagine in the future after a SERP update you'll be able to quickly scan the SERPs and point out what sites have moved and entered the Top 20 or so. This is a nice feature that Google might even consider incorporating into it's own results (than there would be a reason to have that infamous cookie).

A9 also displays alot of "double urls". There is a limit of how many URLs A9 (and others) will rank from each site on a single search (standard of 2) but I've noticed that A9 groups them much closer to each other. Sometimes one URL per 10 results or even 2 or 3 spots apart. So if you have closely related pages dealing with the same topic dont be surprised to see your site twice in the top 20.

There are two sponsored links at the top and at the bottom of the results that are powered by Adwords (of course) making the total amount of results 14.

WHAT I DONT LIKE:

This just disturbs me and can potentially work against A9....Next to every result is a "Site Info" button that when moused over displays site information. Guess what site information?? Alexa Site Information. I dont understand how a company can display such skewed information to the unknowing public. One a sample search I checked the top 10 sites and it didn't surprise me to find a #1 result with an Alexa ranking of over 1 million out rank a #10 result with an Aalexa rank of around 60,000. This doesn't confuse me as I know how Alexa collects it's data but there are alot of "hardcore" Alexa users out there that consider Alexa to be the "bible" of traffic and rank. There are site recommendations that are similar to Amazon's "People who went to this site also went to:" scheme. If a user found my site in the SERPs what is the point of swaying them away to another site??? I think it's a pointless feature along with the "Site Info"

CONCLUSION:

All in all I am excited to see what becomes of this new engine. And with the popularity and reach of Amazon we can be looking at another worthy competitor in the S.E. WAR.

Thank you and goodnight. I'll be at the bar :bow:

its kinda nifty.
dont like the log in to use features.
the results look very googley in look and actual content.
not diggin the washed out brown colors.
...and another toolbar...thats what we all need.

Opting for the "everpresent cookie" I see.



Yeah kinda. looks. like. the. site. I.............am................on..............:p ain:

its kinda funny how the search entry box expands with the window size...could be useful.
i am not seeing this yellow highlighting they mention...is that a 'feature' i dont get?
i foresee more privacy concerns with this puppy.