Surf Canyon, a browser extension that helps you hone in on the search results that best suit your needs, is adding some new features today that bring more customization to your search results.
The Oakland, Calif. startup isn't trying to build another Google or Yahoo, but rather improve on the results you get from those engines. Everyone has moments when they don't quite nail a search query on the first try, and have to reformulate their search repeatedly to get the right results. For example, if you're interested in the nutritional information about an apple and you searched for "apple", most of the top Google results would be for the computer company. You'd have to reformulate your search, perhaps changing it to "apple fruit" or "apple fruit nutrition."
With Surf Canyon, each search result has a bull's-eye next to it. When you click on the icon, you see other search results you might be interested in -- and unlike Google's "similar pages" option, chief executive Mark Cramer says the extension tries to understand the intention of your search, not just look at similar links. It also rearranges the search options on subsequent pages depending on the results you select.
So does this actually work? Cramer says it's hard to know exactly how often people are using the extension, but he estimates there are 100,000 to 150,000 people using it in any given three-day span of time. Surf Canyon also conducted a test of its users by secretly turning off its rearranged results for some. The company found that users with Surf Canyon results clicked through 35 to 40 percent more often, Cramer says.
Now, with verison 2.0 Surf Canyon gives users more control over the process. Using a "My SurfCanyon" page, you can enter specific domains that you want prioritized in your search results. For example, if you're a fan of The New York Times and VentureBeat, Surf Canyon can serve results from those sites at the top of your search.
On the surfce, this might sound similar to Google SearchWiki, which launched last month, but it's actually quite different. SearchWiki is all about rearranging specific results within each search. With Surf Canyon, you just enter your preferred domains once and the customization occurs with every search. Cramer describes the distinction as real-time explicit customization (SearchWiki) versus long-term explicit (My SurfCanyon), but you don't have to follow his terminology to see that Surf Canyon sounds easier.
The extension will also track how many Surf Canyon results you're clicking on versus normal Google results, so you can see how much value it's providing or not providing. (The data is stored on your computer, and isn't shared with Surf Canyon.)
As for revenue, Cramer says the model is still in-development, but will probably involve some kind of licensing. The startup raised a $600,000 seed round in May.
