AOL has been quite active in recent times. They announced a big business model shift, enhanced its e-mail product, and notched deals with big media companies to offer various movie, music, and television videos for download on their AOL Video site within the past year, among various other activities. Their most recent enhancement comes courtesy of FullView, a panel that shows users additional information related to their search query.
The FullView panel appears on the right side of the first page of results and includes editorial content, pictures, video, audio, news, shopping, and local information related to queries whose terms allow for this supplementary content.
For example, a search on “my chemical romance” will show a listing of standard results and sponsored links. But on the right side of the first page the FullView panel appears and offers users a short bio of the group courtesy of AOL Music, videos of the band courtesy of AOL’s video search, Inside AOL Music links for live performances, interviews, and other band-related pages, audio clips of their music, a discography, images of the band, and band-related news.
Each of these FullView results are expandable within the same box, and hovering the cursor over video, audio, and image results will bring up a small box with detailed information. Both of these are nice features for the strong enhancement to AOL’s search results pages.
Along with FullView, AOL has also added a Search History icon right above the FullView results. If a user hovers their cursor over it, they will see an expanded menu that will allow them to either click on recent searches, clear their search history, turn the search history function off, or click on “Manage Your Search History” to go to a whole page dedicated to the task.
FullView is essentially a bigger and more comprehensive version of similar features found on Google and Ask.com. Word has it that there is a possibility that there will be an API that will enable users to submit content that they think should be included in FullView results.
This is a good step forward by AOL, who has been doing some fine things with their products ever since they decided to shift away from being a subscription-based company. FullView should enhance not only AOL’s search functionality, but also AOL’s appeal to possible suitors in the event that Time Warner decides to part with the Web arm of its operations.
A little over a week ago, AOL CEO Jonathan Miller hinted at the increasing possibility of a sale, and on Monday reports began surfacing that Time Warner had been approached by Yahoo! in regards to a possible acquisition of AOL. Time Warner denied any such talks.
AOL should also hope that FullView helps them catch up to Ask.com, which surpassed the Time Warner arm in terms of search share according to the latest comScore figures.
Sources:
http://searchenginewatch.com/showPage.html?page=3623780
http://www.ineedhits.com/free-tools/
blog/2006/10/aol-search-goes-fullview.aspx
http://search.aol.com/aolcom/about#fullview
http://news.com.com/2061-10811_3-6130757.html
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