Search engine for apps

Apps stores let their users find apps via search. Search has
traditionally been a very strong point of the Web, but I think Web apps
likely create specific issues in this space:
* they're not necessarily easy to crawl (since many views are likely to
depend on real user interactions)

* they're not necessarily heavy on indexable content (e.g. the content
might entirely depend on a specific user input)

* there is no systematic way (that I know of) to describe what a Web app
does and get is exposed as such in a search engine

* it is probably hard for a search engine to determine if a given Web
app will work (well or at all) on a given device

* ranking apps might require more data than what search engines have
traditionally been able to gather (e.g. interlinking)

I think many of these items could be helped by new specification work;
some of them might already be addressed by existing products on the
market (e.g. the search view that FirefoxOS is providing, powered from
what I understand by Everything.me).

I'm really interested to hear what people feel about the importance of
this gap, and to hear again about ideas on how to address it (either
through contacts, or via early spec work, or through a workshop, etc).

Received on Thursday, 7 March 2013 10:58:26 UTC