User-Configurable Search Results Ranking

The New
York Times today has a pretty good roundup of
the latest attempts to eat into Google’s dominance of the search market
worldwide. In content, the innovations at Amazon A9 (neighborhood context)
and MSN Search (user-adjsutable search priorities, via slide bars, see screen
shot above) are interesting and seem worth a try.  In format, it
is interesting to note that the Web version of the article INCLUDES LIVE
LINKS to the sites being discussed.  Why can’t the Boston Globe
(a wholly owned subsidiary of the New York Times, Inc.) follow suit?

Google’s success has forced competitors like Yahoo, MSN
Search and Ask
Jeeves to hustle with releasing new product features, search controls
and improved behind-the-scenes programming. The resulting bonanza of
tools brings more search capabilities, presented more intuitively than
the Web has ever seen.

from the New York Times