Just when you though the world of search engines might quieten down a little, along comes Hunch. Bing was touted as the first ‘decision engine’, but it appears Hunch has gone one step further and has made a mockery of that claim barely two weeks after it was released.
This search decision engine isn’t simply about feeding visitors endless websites, which may or may not contain the answers to their queries. Hunch takes a slightly different approach, you type in your keywords and find a question that matches your requirements. It then takes you through a series of questions, until finally reaching a conclusion. This is presented, not in the form of a website, but as a straightforward answer, sometimes with a link to a useful online resource – Wikipedia for example/.
The searches themselves can be as simple as asking whether or not you should get the new iPhone or as complicated as defining your personality type. Whilst Hunch may be an interesting resource for the inquisitive amongst us, it certainly isn’t a Google Killer.
It’s a great interface and an interesting concept, just as with Wolfram Alpha, but it is also extremely detached from the conventions of a traditional search engine, again, much like Wolfram Alpha. It does show that there are avenues that search can move towards in the future; but as yet, Hunch is something of a curiosity and a quick fire FAQ version of Yahoo! Answers, not an evolutionary leap forward for online searches.
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What do you think?