News, local information, images, audio and video files, and other products all in one place, are the enhanced functions of AOL Search, America Online has announced.
With paid subscribers dwindling somewhat, America Online is looking to bump traffic up at its free Website and expanded the AOL Search services with new partners as well as with Google core results, AOL said in their announcement.
AOL Search also features a new updated design moving away from tabbed interfacing to give users more direct, more personalized search, the company said, as well as a new sort and cluster feature helping them get just what they want faster and more efficiently.
AOL licensed cluster technology from Vivisimo to organize relevant results by topics automatically, displaying them along the list of general search results, which AOL said would save users from "having to wade through long lists so they can zero in on more specific results and find exactly what they're searching for. AOL Search is the first major search engine to incorporate clustering technology within its search results."
The company also added several other features to AOL Search, including:
♦An AOL SmartBox suggestion tool, automatically presenting relevant choices to narrow a query at once, even before you hit the search button.
♦A new results layer, Snapshots, which appears at the top of results and offers editorial content and relevant information for topics ranging from local movie times to current events.
♦Several quick tools including a calculator, a currency converter, a find-a-flight function from AOL Travel, and a find-a-restaurant function from AOL City Guide.
♦Integrated shopping search results, offering easier ways to buy what you're looking for online or to access Pinpoint Shopping's database of over 25 million products, which you can narrow down by category, brand, price range, store names, and even merchant ratings.
♦Adjustable font sizes and improved screen-reader software used by the visually impaired.
AOL said they would expand local search capabilities in the near future with more diverse features, based on a new algorithm to give users more comprehensive and convenient ways to find information where they live, where they work, and where they travel, working with Fast Search & Transfer, Inc. to develop those expanded local search capabilities.
The expanded AOL Search was announced in hand with a second announcement that AOL signed a licensing deal with Copernic for desktop search technology, working with Copernic to deliver integrated desktop search with AOL Search to let users find files on their hard drives and information online from one place.
