Poll: Would you try this brainstorming search engine if it were built?

9 pointsby amichailvor 17 Jahren7 comments

I wonder whether one can build a brainstorming search engine by simply returning other people's queries that are similar to your query.

Such queries might be ranked by hot, top, and new say.

As an example, searching for "car" might return related queries "foldable car", "flying car", "shape-shifting car", etc. Clicking on "shape-shifting car" might return "shape-shifting boat", "shape-shifting building", "flying car", etc.

Incidentally, others may have submitted more specific queries such as "foldable car" to see elaborations on this idea or related ideas. RSS feeds would be provided to track queries over time.

Would you try this brainstorming search engine if it were built?

8 comments

pierrefarvor 17 Jahren

There are plenty of such tools for keyword research for SEO purposes.

A collection:

https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

http://adlab.microsoft.com/Keyword-Group-Detection/default.a...

http://www.google.com/sktool/#

http://www.keywordspy.com/

http://www.keyworddiscovery.com/

http://www.wordtracker.com/

Overviews from SEOs: http://www.searchengineguide.com/lisa-barone/five-steps-to-e...

http://www.copyblogger.com/keyword-research/

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/free-keyword-research-too...

amichailvor 17 Jahren

They will probably not return novel ideas though. That's the whole point of the proposed service.

pierrefarvor 17 Jahren

They're not bad. Of course you can improve them, and if you try, all power to you. Seriously, you can make a bit of money off of this.

Ping me if you need someone to bounce ideas with. Email in my profile...

TallGuyShortvor 17 Jahren

I've used Google's suggestion feature in a similar fashion many times. When you start typing a query, a menu appears with similar, popular requests. When I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking for, I put in a general word, and I see what other queries are popular.

This helps me find the correct term for things when I'm not sure, and I'm sure could be used to see if similar ideas to your idea have been documented before. I tried typing in 'folding car', and the list was full of different folding car parts and accessories. Executing that query would quickly reveal if anyone had toyed with the idea or blogged about the possibility. More importantly, it would show if anyone was already using the idea commercially.

So I think you could specialize in this kind of searching, but it would be hard to catch up to Google. Have a large user base would be essential to the success of such a system.

amichailvor 17 Jahren

Typing just "car" into Google doesn't reveal interesting ideas about cars though.

Additionally, what I propose can give you ideas that aren't already popular on the web.

This can be used to generate novel ideas.

[deleted]vor 17 Jahren

xenoterracidevor 17 Jahren

better idea, see searches that were made by other people who searched the same thing as you, in a recent search timespan. (for example if I search linux firewall, 10 minutes later I search iptables they are probably related).

eintnohickvor 17 Jahren

no, google