SurfCanyon's downloadable plugin tool improves your existing search with engines like Google,Yahoo and MSN by offering recommendations for individual search items directly on the search results pages. We first reviewed SurfCanyon last year, and the company has since added some major updates. The most important of these would be the control options that are now given to users. SurfCanyon's Mark Cramer describes the biggest difference between the first version and the new version:
"The first version of the product really didn’t leave much control to the user – it was either “on” or “off” and if you didn’t like what it was doing when it was on then the only recourse was to turn it off. The Options Menu, while small for the moment, begins to give users some important controls over the experience."
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How does the new options menu allow users to have more control over their experience? First of all, users can now decide which search engines will be activated; Google, Yahoo and/or MSN. SurfCanyon has indicated that more search engines will be added to the mix later on this year. From here, the search results page will give recommendations when a user selects the SurfCanyon bull's eye icon.
This feature can also be turned off, so that those users that find some of the recommendation results for every clicked link to be intrusive can better utilize SurfCanyon to fit their needs. Additionally, the number of recommendations that a user can receive for an individual search result has been extended from 3 to 5, based on user feedback.