If its banned by Google, its Gada.be good?

Here is an interesting snippet from an article I read today...

"An unusual metasearch service named Gada.be launched its public beta on the Web in October. By November, its novel approach to search got it banned from Google's listings."

Read: Gada.be Illustrates Search Engine Ups and Downs

So, what is Gada.be? (pronounced "gotta-be") Gada.be is a metasearch engine for RSS feeds. You can search for feeds on a topic dear to you and have them delivered to your desktop or mobile device. Which incidentally, is what got them in trouble with the Google. (Go figure...)

So after reading about them, I decided to look them over and see what kind of value I can glean out of it. (Tip: Check out Windows Live for managing your blog collection.)

Hmm... Gada.be searches blogs... hmmm... How can I use that info to my advantage. I know! I will see who (if anybody) is laying people off and then position myself to scoop up the talent the target company could not afford to keep on. But who? Hmmm... since this is all hypothetical (and since there is a newspaper next to me with appliance ads) I will pick Whirlpool to pick on.

Now one thing, a somewhat "cool" thing about Gada.be is that you don't gotta-be (pun intended) at their website to use their service. You just have to know their special syntax. For example, take a gander at this:

http://whirpool-layoffs.gada.be

By adding that URL into your browser, you are asking Gada.be to search multiple RSS feeds (blogs) for mentions of the terms "whirlpool" and "layoffs" in the same posting. By default it will check feeds on such engines as MSN, Icerocket, Yahoo and Google (among several others). You may notice that I used a dash (-) between the terms "whirlpool" and "layoffs." This was intentional as it tells Gada.be that you are searching for two different terms.

Now let's say that you wanted to search for a particular phrase or phrases in conjunction with certain keywords. Not a problem! To designate phrases, just use a period between each word of the phrase and a dash to sepeparate the phrase or phrases (and keywords) for each other. In case you just said, "Huh?" Let me give you another example.

http://whirlpool-layoffs-arkansas.plant.gada.be

With this example, you are asking Gada.be to search RSS feeds (blogs-again) for blogpostings that discuss "whirlpool", "layoffs" and the phrase "arkansas plant." I did not notice any word limitations on the search, so this could work as well...

http://whirlpool-layoffs-arkansas.plant-economy.gada.be

Although by now you understand what I am doing, I will explain anyway. With the above URL you are searching multiple blogs for the terms "whirlpool," "layoffs," "economy" and the phrase "arkansas plant."

Of course, you could bypass all of this and go to the homepage and type in your terms that way. However, if you are out and about and you are itching to search blogs on your mobile device, then Gada.be might come in handy. It is (afterall) ideally designed for mobile devices. Check out this quote from their "About" page.

Why gada.be?

It was borne out of several frustrations. If you've ever tried to visit a Web site over a mobile device, you know it's a pain in the knuckle. The domain had to be simple to key-in from anywhere. gada.be is 4232.2233 on most cell phones and PSPs. Normally, when you want to find something online, you have to choose a Web site (wait for the page to load) enter the query (wait for the second page to load) then see results from that provider. With "gada.be," you insert the query *AS* the subdomain!

Then, there's having to visit several sites just to get the results you want. Often, this isn't feasible when you're on-the-go. Even when you're sitting with a laptop or chained to a desktop, it's still a time-consuming process. We all love the individual search services, so why not bring 'em together? Okay, that's what we did.

Gada.be searches all of its categories by default. To focus your search to a particular niche, you have to visit the site. Here is a list of the categories you can use to further target what you are looking for.

amazon blogs default entertainment geeky health jobs multimedia news photos random research shopping social

If you are turned on by this and want to keep closer tabs on them, check out their updates blog.

Digability rating: Add this to your bag of tricks.

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UPDATE - 12-19-05!

I just received a psychic update from Glenn "The Great One" Gutmacher who points out that "Gada.be" has changed a few things since I initially blogged about it.

Using the Gada.be syntax in the way I mentioned above, for example: http://internet.recruiting-gutmacher.gada.be is no longer working. (Bummer!)

However, flipping the search this way will: http://gada.be/d/internet.recruiting-gutmacher

Thank you Great One!