Search Firms - Other

We are always happy to see people using Topix to discuss what matters most to them, especially when it involves civic issues and encourages people to become more involved in the democratic process.Case in point, a Topix thread is giving...

Topix CEO, Chris Tolles, took part in a recent Street Fight Summit panel discussion about the increasing relevance of hyperlocal content in political campaigns. Chris spoke of how hyperlocal ad inventory becomes a very valuable commodity during election cycles,...

We commissioned Equation Research to do a survey of over 1,000 people regarding the link between voting and online commenting behaviors, and the results were really interesting. The research found an increasing number of citizens turning to each other (versus one-to-many sources...

A recent study shows that top news sites are attracting a large female audience. According to the report Topix has the largest percentage of women readers of all the news aggregators as they make up 56.2% of our overall audience....

Transactions are the third type of search which are yet to be developed and explored by search engines.

Sometimes when you search you are looking for a way to do something: buy a present, book a flight, send a tweet, sell something, resolve a bug you're working on, send an email etc, search a topic-specific search engine etc.

Wouldn't it be good if your search engine provided a quick way to perform actions?

There is no reason why some search keywords should not become search commands.

That's why the "Do" section of Trexy's result pages are for taking actions related to search keywords / commands.

In the past month I've added over 1,700+ actions to Trexy. They are mostly actions to search other engines like Google, Wikipedia and many more.

This means you can quickly search Google - by starting your search with the search command "google". For example, searching Trexy for "google cars" shows all the Google action buttons related to "cars".

Search actions work by automatically submitting details to web forms. Does your website have a form where a user can perform actions? Why not add the action to Trexy?

Research shows there are three types of search: navigational, informational and transactional. That's why Trexy result pages are divided into three sections: Find (navigational), Learn (informational), and Do (transactional) for a given keyword.

The order of these sections now changes depending on the search keyword. For example the Do section appears first on the "Buy Car" result page - as this is clearly a transactional search. Currently the "Buy Car" results page enables user's to quickly search AutoTrader to buy a car.

Other queries are navigational in nature. "Facebook", for example, is currently one of the top 10 searches that users enter to Find the social networking site facebook.com.
In the last month I've focussed on the Learn (informational) section. It is clear from listening to our users that the natural way to solve informational search is through question and answers. As  a result I've changed the learn section so you can quickly add your question to a keyword page. Here are the latest questions - can you help answer them?

Tom Grubisich from Street Fight has posted an interesting article about the struggle hyperlocal sites such as Topix face when trying to increase engagement of their users.Why Hyperlocals Are Missing Out on Engagement...

 A recent survey conducted by Topix about the state of local advertising has garnered some interest from the press.  Below are three articles outlining the results of the survey and an interview with Topix CEO, Chris Tolles discussing the role...

I've just released the next version of Trexy. 

We were feeling the love today with our Earth Day design, which got a few kudos from industry watchers (thanks Mashable!) And props to the Ask.com users who correctly answered the Question of the Day. It is a sad, but potent reminder that a plastic bottle takes 450 years to decompose.

Special thanks to Ask.com's Diana Furka and Holly Boston for this beauty...

 

 

Valerie Combs, VP Communications