SiteSeer: Yet Another Search Tool

I wish I’d thought of this idea for an application before the deadline for this. (Assuming, of course, that no one has already had the idea.)

(Although I did submit my storage idea, which I guess nobody liked.)

Anyway, this application I’d like to see would be a search tool that would search the web, but it would search only the sites listed in your favorites/bookmarks and history (either or both, as specified by you), rather than the entire web.

Let’s call the application “SiteSeer” for the purposes of discussion. I’m sure that name is taken, however. It’s too good not to be, but it’ll do for now.

How many times have you tried to find an article on a site that you visited just the other day, but you can’t for the life of you remember where you saw it? Or how about when you’re positive you have a specific site bookmarked somewhere, but you can’t remember what it’s called, and you’re too disorganized to find it?

That’s where SiteSeer comes in.

It’s a web search tool where most of the search work has already been done by you. You know that needle is in this particular haystack, and all you need is a good magnet.

SiteSeer would almost certainly have to tie into Google, or another existing search site, or hell, maybe even multiple search sites. The reason for this is that you’d need some sort of existing database from which to pull search results. Doing a simultaneous live search of dozens of sites would be far too slow to be useful (although I suppose it cold be an option, if you wanted to do deeper reasearch and let it run overnight or something). I don’t think this would be a problem though, since Google seems to love applications that tie into it.

Come to think of it… SiteSeer would make a cool website. The only problem would be finding some way to get it to read your bookmarks and history. But a web site that could do that… that’s got “security nightmare” written all over it. Maybe a better idea would be to provide a way for for a user to upload bookmarks. Hmm… A user could create an account, upload his/her bookmarks, then search those sites…

Now that I think of it, when viewed in terms of a web site, it bears some resemblance to the popular “social bookmarking” sites like del.icio.us, but I think the goal is a little different. I don’t know of a site that lets you search in quite this manner. Of course you can search a social bookmarking site, but I don’t know of one that will let you search for content, and limit that search to a certain set of URLs, which is essentially what I’m talking about.

Damn… Anybody know a good programmer willing to work for free in exchange for a nice cut on the backend?