How web 2.0 makes site search even more subjective

Site search functionality on web sites makes it easy for shoppers to find products according to attributes determined by the retailers: women’s swimsuit, size 10, blue. But how about finding products on a site according to attributes created and tagged by other shoppers based on what they consider important about those products, so that a shopper could not only identify a size 10, women’s blue swimsuit, but also one that was “comfortable,” “not too stretchy” and “opaque?”

The next generation of site search that incorporates the ability to search by consumer generated attributes might look something like site search on Buzillions.com, a new site launched by PowerReviews Inc., where the search functionality is powered by Endeca Technologies Inc. Buzillions aggregates thousands of reviews from actual buyers of products and as part of the search experience it serves up, makes the consumer-tagged attributes of those products a search filtering option.

“It’s the same guided navigation you get on any site we power,” says Brian Rosenblat, e-commerce solutions manager at Endeca. “But one of the unique things about Buzillions is it they are crating that experience on top of users generated content.” The resulting social browsing experience, adds Rosenblat, allows customers to refine a search not just on objective product attributes but on more subjective ones.

Buzzillions makes consumer-generated tags searchable by capturing keywords from customer reviews that describe pros, cons and best uses, and allowing site visitors to filter and narrow using those keywords in addition to traditional category, brand and price filtering.

Rosenblat says that from the perspective of Endeca’s platform, the consumer-generated tags in the product reviews are just another attribute that can re refined and searched like any other data. “Buzillions is just the tip of what you are going to see,” Rosenblat says. “They have pioneered this experience on top of Endeca. But there is no reason others, particularly Endeca customers, couldn`t start using this to create this same experience using content from their customers.”