Refine search queries
Old news I'm sure: AltaVista Testing "Paraphrase" Tool: the tool suggest related search queries. It's about time. I have always loved the accuracy of Google's "Did you mean ...", but that is really a spell checker. The queries the new Altavista tool suggest (as far as I could find out) don't seem releant enough yet to make it worth the space they take up (especially in that space-eating altavista design, com on guys, get a designer to clean that baby up), they are simply derived from the titles and descriptions of the page one results.
But suggesting queries is definitely a brilliant idea, and the way forward for search engines, since most people don't refine queries.
By the way, I'd never seen Google do this before until today:
# May 10, 2002