The deep or hidden web refers to web content that is not part of the surface web, which is indexed using standard search engines. When researching notes for this blog, I commonly fail to take advantage of videos and images accessible, for example, on YouTube or Flickr. These assets could be instructive but will be missed by my Google searches. I could go directly to the search engines embedded in these sites but this requires additional effort on my part. There is now an easy solution to this problem -- WebMynd.
I installed this program as as extension of Mozilla Firefox, which is my web browser. Whenever I launch a search with Google, the upper right-hand portion of the search engine retrieval page (SERP), the normal location for Google sponsored links, is taken over by WebMynd for its own results. These include links to Twitter, YouTube, Flickr, Digg, OneRiot, SnappyFingers, and BackType. The user is provided the opportunity to customize the WebMynd search to include or exclude these, and other sites, based on personal preferences. My guess is that you will not be familiar with some of these specialized search applications -- nor was I. By configuring the program to view their search results, you can view the links that they provide without any effort. If you do not find them to be useful, you can then remove them from your list.
It seems to me that WebMynd offers both a challenge and opportunity for Google. It is a valuable asset for users but the program also takes over valuable "real estate" for its own purposes. It seems to me that Google will now be challenged either to extend its own search capabilities or purchase this upstart company.
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