Google Co-op First Look

Google Co-op is another brand new launch from Google. It's basically about human-powered vertical search. Google Co-op lets you - meaning corporations, individuals, etc. - aggregate sites that can be searched as a group when certain keywords are triggered. Users need to opt-in to your co-op to see these results. Sound familiar? Yup, it's like Rollyo.

Google says that this is a way for you to share your expertise through packaging. I would love to see them layer in Blogger so that there is some editorial around these results as well. By the way, I think this section of health co-ops is the rumored Google Health.

The product is an open platform but it's very difficult to understand and use right now, even for a geek like me. You can browse through a directory of providers and elect to subscribe to them. Then all of those provider's relevant links will be added to your Google search results for relevant searches.

As of this writing I am not seeing any of the searches I thought I would see in my results. I think Google is just getting the product out the door. For example, I subscribed to the digg tool, but I am still not seeing the searches they are promising in my Web results.

Google Co-op is promising but it has to get easier to use. Googlfy it please, Google.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Co-op

Comments

[Otis Gospodnetic]

This also sounds very much like Simpy's Groups. This lets a group of any size collect sites/links in a bundle (err, Group) and make it searchable and taggable.

[Pantera]

You can also submit you se at www.coopdir.com which is the only directory only for co-op cse.