Updated Site Design
We welcome any comments on our new site design. We had three goals:
Clear presentation of new features, including hot sites and hot pages
Improved appearance
More comfortable to read
We hope you enjoy it, and look forward to your feedback and suggestions!
Great search results!
I guess the term is “drinking your own Kool-Aid” – I’ve been going to thisnewz.com for some basic searches. Here are a few I’ve just looked at – graded by how well they met my specific needs. I would love to hear from you with your own tests!
1) trying to find a health study that I’d read about a couple of days ago in the LA Times, associating various lifestyle choices with chronic disease rates. I searched for: -latimes diet smoking- in the following systems:
Google.com – D : http://www.google.com/search?q=latimes+diet+smoking
Notes – good results from a word match perspective – but completely useless for my needs.
OneRiot.com – F: http://www.oneriot.com/search?q=latimes+diet+smoking
Notes – only one result. A match, but not what I was looking for
Topsy.com – F : http://topsy.com/search?q=latimes+diet+smoking
Notes – three results, with the same title and description. Same result as OneRiot, but listed three times.
thisnewz.com – B- : http://thisnewz.com/M/sbeta.php?qn=latimes+diet+smoking&pn=&rn=20
Notes – the study I was looking for showed up, clearly labeled, at #6
Looking for a free online OCR solution: searched for: -free OCR-
Google.com – B : http://www.google.com/search?q=free+OCR
Notes – a mix of sites offering free OCR products, and product summary. Good results, but I tried the first link and the product was not effective. Much more research required to find a good candidate.
OneRiot.com – C: http://www.oneriot.com/search?q=free+OCR
Notes – two results – one identical to the lower quality service that was #1 on Google. The other result matched against “test prep from OCR”.
Topsy.com -C+ : http://topsy.com/search?q=free+OCR
Notes – again, “free-ocr.com” was #1. Results otherwise similar to Google.
thisnewz.com – A : http://thisnewz.com/M/sbeta.php?qn=free+OCR&pn=&rn=20
Notes – first result was for the OCR test prep company, second result was a summary page, third result was flagged “great free online OCR” – and it was a fantastic product – www.onlineocr.net
Great stuff! Very exciting to have this be a useful product, even if it’s mostly for me right now!
A Quick Intro and Poll
ThisNewz is a project I’ve been working on and as it has gotten more functional I’ve thought more about what the next steps should be. (visit ThisNewz)
This blog is an experiment in crowd-sourced feedback. I’m only doing it because I want to hear what you have to say!
A little background, then I’ll ask for your input in a poll and through the comments.
I created ThisNewz.com because I’m a news junkie, and fascinated by social networking. At the core, it’s a real-time search engine focused around breaking news and and topical information. It’s built with a mix of custom code and open source systems. The design/layout needs significant work.
On top of this core, there’s a home page with breaking news, a real-time search engine, a trends page, and numerous topic pages.
Traffic comes from a variety of sources: here are the metrics I’m monitoring closely and their trends: numbers are for the previous 7 days, then compared to the prior week
Visits: 4,605 - up 33%
Pages: 5,547 – up 37%
Pages/Visit: 1.20 – up 3%
Bounce rate: 88.40% – down 4%
Time on site: .36 – up 6%
New visitors: 95% – down 2%
So, directionally everything looks good. However, traffic is highly dependent on a few sources, including Google Search, and they may not be reliable going forward. Pages per visit is low, so it’s a stop and go experience right now. I am not yet tracking outbound traffic.
The top page for traffic this week was:
http://thisnewz.com/M/N/ko/kourtney-kardashian.html (the images on these pages are automatically sourced from flickr, restricted by Creative Commons)
I’ve had a blast pulling this together, and now need to make some decisions as to where to take it: Here’s the poll – please vote! I’m really only doing this because I want to hear what you think.
Thank you! Looking forward to the conversation!
