[uf-discuss] Search on CSS element (was: Making Microformats Searchable)

[Nir Yariv]

> > My mom would never search for hcards (no matter the syntax)
> > any more than she would search for images in a PNG format.
> > It's a niche search that could be performed by a small
> > group of technical people and it's no surprise that
> > general-purpose search engines haven't made it a priority.
> > Nor do I think such support would add much value for most
> > people.

I completely agree. I think the real value will come from enabling
easy creation of services that will  use the search as backend, and
present the results with a good front end. For example, a site for
restaurant reviews - users will specify what kind of food, location
etc, the site does a query to Yahoo search API, filters the relevant
results and displays them nicely. The key is you can relegate the
heavy weight search/aggregation functionality and focus on your
specific domain.

> Yes, considering the idea I outlined is all of 12 hours old (or 4
> days, depending on where you start counting), it's amazing search
> engine companies aren't already retooling.

It was always possible to simply index 'class="hreview"' etc. I
suppose that's what Technorati did.