VentureBeat

Surf Canyon, a Firefox browser add-on that helps you find more relevant search results, can now help you search for jobs, apartments and more on Craigslist.

The Oakland, Calif. startup’s goal is to help users locate the search results they want without having to repeatedly tweak their query. Once you’ve installed Surf Canyon, a bull’s eye appears next to your search results in Google, Yahoo or MSN. When you see a result that’s close to what you’re looking for, you can click on the bull’s eye, and the add-on will show you additional recommendations — based on that selection, as well previous selections and searches during the same session — from elsewhere in your search results.

The company’s latest release, which is available on SurfCanyon.com today, and should be on the Mozilla website tomorrow, takes this approach beyond general search engines and into e-commerce. Not only does the add-on provide recommendations in Craigslist, it also previews the images included in the listings.

I’ve played with Surf Canyon’s new release, and there are a few hiccups in its Craigslist integration, probably because the listings themselves don’t always have much information. For example, when I clicked on a “charming” apartment in Redwood City, the add-on recommended another apartment in a different city with a different number of bedrooms asking for a different price — but hey, it was also described as “charming.”

Okay, so I’m picking on the most egregiously silly example. Most of the other results were pretty useful and relevant.

Moving into Craigslist is an interesting way to expand. There’s definitely a use for Surf Canyon there, and it probably opens up more opportunities for the company’s business strategy of presenting sponsored links within its recommendations. It also helps Surf Canyon become even more tempting against other companies that try to improve your search experience, like ManagedQ. (One of the more high-profile efforts in this area, Yahoo’s SearchMonkey initiative, probably won’t lead to much direct competition, since the new applications don’t reorder your search results, and are limited to Yahoo search.)

The new release also includes support for Firefox 3, whose final version will be available on June 17. That’s a smart improvement, but selfishly, I have to ask: What about Camino?

Last month, Surf Canyon raised a $600,000 seed round.

Surf Canyon, which helps users improve and refine the results they get from search engines like Google, publicly launched its browser add-on today.

Once users install Surf Canyon, a bullseye icon appears next to every item you bring up in a Google, Yahoo or MSN search. If one of the search results seems particularly relevant to you, click on the bullseye and Surf Canyon will offer you three more recommendations based on what the add-on thinks you’re looking for.

This probably sounds awfully close to Google’s “similar pages” function, but Surf Canyon chief executive Mark Cramer says that what happens under the hood is substantially different. Like the rest of Google’s search engine, the similar pages option is based on links — if Site A links to Site B and you ask Google for similar pages to Site B, it shows you other pages that Site A linked to.

Surf Canyon, on the other hand, tries to figure out what you’re actually looking for, based both on the specific search result that you highlight and on your previous queries and selections during the same “information session.” (The company elaborates on the difference between the “similar pages” function and Surf Canyon’s recommendations here.)

For example, let’s say you want to learn about the leopard. Most of your search results will probably be related to the Apple operating system, which isn’t very useful if you’re trying to find out more about the animal. You could try to reword your query, but if you see a result that’s close to what you’re looking for, it’s easy to just click on the bullseye and see Surf Canyon’s other recommendations. (See screenshot below.)

We wrote about Surf Canyon back in September, but shortly afterwards the company decided to change its product from a standalone web site to an extension for Firefox and Internet Explorer. The new approach makes more sense, since it creates additional functionality within your normal search page. Once you’ve installed Surf Canyon, it takes just a click to get additional recommendations. The real question, as Cramer acknowledges, is whether people are willing to install another add-on.

Surf Canyon’s business model is based on providing sponsored links within its recommendations. The Oakland-based company has currently raised $250,000 in angel funding.

Although developmental search services like Powerset and Hakia may one day rule the search market, for the moment, Google and Yahoo still dominate.

Surf Canyon is a new service that wants you to use it along with Google or Yahoo, offering users an easier way to instantly refine results. Google makes you change or add keywords in your query to refine results, which produces a fresh list. In fact, you may just want to refine some of the results you already have on the page.

Surf Canyon recognizes that Google may dominate search for years to come, despite the promises of natural language or semantic search. The most sensible strategy, then, is to utilize the technology the search giant has already built, and attempt to capture a fringe set of users who desire more functionality.

Other companies are trying this too, including Mahalo, with its sidebar (see coverage).

Using Surf Canyon is simple. You enter a term and get your standard 10 results. If any of those results look close to what you’re trying to find, you can hover your cursor over the result, or click a small button, to instantly get a re-targeted search, instead of having to type more keywords.

If, for instance, you were searching for this blog, you could hover over the first result (see example below) to bring up re-targeted results, in this case some past VentureBeat posts that were popular. If you then look at subsequent pages of results, Surf Canyon will also remix those, bringing forth pages related to what initially seemed interesting.

Though it may never draw significant attention, Surf Canyon could attract a small user base of people who, for whatever reason, prefer using this scroll-and-click targeting approach, as opposed to being forced to refine searches by changing keywords, as Google makes you do. By not burning through millions of dollars in an attempt to “reinvent the wheel,” as the newer search engines aspire to, Surf Canyon may be giving itself a chance of survival.

At the same time, it risks not differentiating enough to interest users, even if they find the search feature convenient. Google, for instance, offers a “Similar Results” button that appears similar. Google’s link requires navigating to an entirely new page, and Surf Canyon claims that Google only shows pages found through links, whereas their own method is to provide an entirely new search. However, users may not notice or understand the difference.

The company’s income will come from sponsored results, like other engines. Surf Canyon, based in Oakland, has three employees and has taken angel funding. To try the service, visit the homepage and click the email link to request an invitation.