newsonaut

Turning inner space into outer space

May 27, 2012

Axis just might be the best thing in search since Google

After trying out Axis for just a few minutes, I totally understood and appreciated this nifty new search gizmo from Yahoo. It’s not often you can say that. And it’s one reason I predict this has potential be the next great leap in search innovation.

Once installed, Axis sits in the bottom left corner of your browser of choice. Hover over the search field and it opens up for you to click and type in your keywords.

Immediately you get two things: a list of suggested refinements below the search term and a horizontal display of search results — each a preview of a web page. If you need more results, there’s an arrow at the right to slide them in.

Clicking on a search result will take you to that website, but your search results come along with you. Hover back over Axis, and you can choose another website.

Axis is slick and fast, but best of all it’s useful. What made Google great was that it offered up good results from a fast-loading site. Axis also does this, but goes a step further by cutting out the middle man. You don’t have to “go” to Axis because it’s always with you.

Any complaints? Just one. Axis looks spiffy sitting in the bottom left, but it might look even better if it could be minimized to just an icon or a narrow bar.