22/09/2007

Search Not working in the New Widget Directory for Netvibes

Hi,

Netvibes has just announced that their Widgets, Universes and Tabs Directory (The ECOSYSTEM) has been revamped.

The look is changed, there is no more a FEED DIRECTORY, the new title is:
The Netvibes Widget directory.

You can see what are the most popular widgets and rate the widgets you like or not.

Netvibes pretends that now you can have :"A fresh design, a better navigation. Finding widgets has never been easier on Netvibes, you can now browse and filter widgets by categories, try our new search and see live preview on widget’s details page."

Well it was need, as I was also writing myself in July, Netvibes Ecosystem should improve the Search function...

But, as will rewiew it, I do not see any clear improvement in the search function.

The search has not clearly improved. Well, probably, if you just happen to use Netvibes, the search is better but if you use Google a few times a day then... No it has not improved. Let's show you why.

Suppose I want to find the TAB I created LONDON UK about all you need to prepare a trip to London (UK), what I should do is type LONDON UK and find the TAB in the first results but then no!

So first results are: UNIVERSES as Rugby World Cup 2007and URL Shortener ???.
Well default the selection is "Most recent" so I have to click on "Most Popular" ... let's do it.

And the result are:Finance and Mini-Clock and Babylon Box ???

I see some problems as the search seems to forget the tags, that authors have chosen for their widgets and also there is no distinction in the search function between tabs and widgets or universes...
A good solution would be to rate first "title" of the widget, then Tags, then use ratings and downloads. The missing search choice is MOST PERTINENT.

Now lets try LONDON UK TRAVEL, as a search string. But the result is the same of the previuo s search without TRAVEL ??!!

Well perhaps the search works better with the Widgets. So let's try to focus on them.
I will search for NETVIBER EXPERIENCE (well yes this blog has a feed so...) and as you can see here on the capture the first result is ... Google Calendar Embedded ...

Well, you could think that my Feed is not so popular or not so recent, ok let's try NETVIBES itself on its own Search.
Here is the result:
and surprise the first result is ... GOOGLE CALENDAR EMBEDDED... and is the same that I had for my feed so MOST POPULAR does not screen the results but gives just the most popular list with no regards for the search string ... strange!

But the wirst has to come, suppose you are a Sponsor of Netvibes and you want to see where are your universes, suppose you are the French Newspaper Group "LE FIGARO" then you search for LE FIGARO and the first result is ... MTV.it , the Italian MTV !!!!!


It seems the SEARCH FUNCTION is not working properly!

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe you're looking for http://eco.netvibes.com/search?q=figaro or http://eco.netvibes.com/search?q=london

Anonymous said...

Hello,

The brand new search feature works fine for me, this issue must have been fixed.

JAC said...

Hi,
Thanks for you comments!

Yes,now it seems that those 2 searches Fiagro and London work fine.

But in general the Search Functions is still not efficient as I would like.

The choice between RECENT and POPULAR is not satisfactory for me in a very fast changing environment.