Comments on: Grokking Transparansee

By: Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 17:30:50 +0000

John:

I know you know that lots of people read the blog. But here's what Steve L. told me:

"We got a whole bunch of client inquiries after Battelle

By: ScottyM

ScottyM — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 15:38:45 +0000

Just looks like a multi-dimensional nearest neighbor search. Nothing new technically, but this looks like a useful set of applications for it!

By the way some typical pitfalls with this type of tool are prioritization. To someone on a nice date, the $$$ bistro is not at all similar to the $$ bistro next door. To someone in a wheelchair, the $ bistro and $$ bistro next door look very similar, given that proximity is more of a driving factor.

In other words, the individual users wind up having to set weights on what “nearest” means — especially as the dimensionality of the search goes up.

Where this often winds up is in an interactive parameterized search, like the one at http://www.bluenile.com

By: ScottyM

ScottyM — Wed, 16 Mar 2005 15:35:14 +0000

Just looks like a multi-dimensional nearest neighbor search. Nothing new technically, but this looks like a useful set of applications for it!

By: Bruno Mitchell

Bruno Mitchell — Sun, 13 Mar 2005 13:50:35 +0000

I’ve used Endeca search and it solves the problem, but it still requires you pretty much know exactly what you’re searching for and makes the assumption there’s inventory item that matches somewhere down the path they lead you. The drill downs do give you a number of items in each category, which is helpful. But if you want to broaden your search to change your preferences to find a btter match, you have to start over again. (If you try and follow their navigation, you still may end up down a “blind alley” without finding something that matches your needs.) I like the idea of Transparansee which would let you specify your preferences at the beginning and then tells you what’s the closest match — even if it’s not an exact match to what you started with, since there are seldom exact matches anyhow.

By: Ezra Ball

Ezra Ball — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 22:40:44 +0000

Another approach to the “no results found” problem is Endeca’s guided navigation paradigm. It assumes that people are going to type basically crappy one or two word queries into a search box, so in addition to search results, you also get options to refine your query along predefined dimensions. (Also easier seen than explained).

By: niefeng

niefeng — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 15:09:08 +0000

Hi I am a chinese ,and your articls are so intersted to me.Due to my poor english ,I read your articls is so hard.but I will keep on reading do my best.

By: Bruno Mitchell

Bruno Mitchell — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:14:59 +0000

Looks like someone finally came up with a simple solution for “no results found” — by far the most frustrating aspect of shopping for anything online. I wish there was something like that when I was searching for a digital camera online last weekend. Are there any ecommerce sites using it now? I would like to see how it worked, but could not seem to find anything like it on Fodors.

By: Avinash

Avinash — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 08:04:59 +0000

Hey John,
Whats the way to send you any info on defections to Google?
I can't find any 'Contact Me' link at your site. Perhaps you could put it up on your blog page.

By: Tony Gentile

Tony Gentile — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 05:13:48 +0000

Nice coverage John.

I talked with Steve and reviewed the platform in October of last year:

http://www.buzzhit.com/2004/10/transparenseecom-better-search-through.html