Search is, of course a fascinating and ever changing world. As I have noted in a number of reviews of new semantic and other forms of search, most new options are a variation on the basic oogle or Yahoo concept, with additional layers of social activity or semantic meaning stuck to the top.
Not so Pipl.com, an amazing people search engine that offers a far better way of finding information about people by INTERACTING with the databases of the massive databases that underpin the web.
Think, for a moment about how much more MySpace knows about you than is available on your public profile. Or how much of your personal info is in profiles stored on relational databases instead of pages.
Pipl thought about that construct and did something different. Their model is to query the massive public databases available online and report the results in a well designed, simple results page.
Here's what they say about themselves:
Unlike a typical search-engine, Pipl is designed to retrieve information from the deep web, our robots are set to interact with searchable databases and extract facts, contact details and other relevant information from personal profiles, member directories, scientific publications, court records and numerous other deep-web sources.
Pipl is not just about finding more results; we are using advanced language-analysis and ranking algorithms to bring you the most relevant bits of information about a person in a single, easy-to-read results page.
You should NT expect the site to magically identify the one and only one John Nichols. Or, as the results above indicate, one James Nichols in Oakland CA. There are a number of us, but the page does identify some results about me, and someone who knew me could figure out which pretty fast.
I was very impressed by both the depth and breadth of Pipl. I have used sites in the past through Google and even my beloved Yahoo to no effect. Pipl is different in a remarkable and powerful set of ways. You should definitely give it a flutter to find your missing persons!
Thanks for reading, and don't forget to write.
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