Barry points out* that Google Finance now offers suggestions as you enter a company name or ticker symbol. This is a trend we’ve written about many times and from many players. Here’s a quick review of non-Google suggest options.

+ SurfWax LookAhead (Several demos available).
Full review here. Unlike what others offer, LookAhead technology that can be licensed by any webmaster or site owner.

Selected Demos:

+ SurfWax LookAhead Blog Search
Very useful. A great way to see the technology in action.

+ Librarians and information professionals might be interested to view LookAhead technology used with a library OPAC. Here’s a demo using the SWAN OPAC from a group of libraries in suburban Chicago. Again, instead of rerunning a search for a keyword , you’ll see actual entries suggested prior to clicking the search button. Useful also as a knowledge discovery tool.

+ SEC Docs
This demo has been around for over 18 months and allows you to see the technology while searching for non-EDGAR docs on the SEC.gov site. Also, NEW, LookAhead using Yahoo Finance. Surfwax CEO Tom Holt was able to put together this quick and dirty demo (in only 15 minutes with just a list. Features over 30,000 companies/instruments and ticker symbols.
+ Yahoo Finance + LookAhead.
Expect more EDGAR search soon.

+ WikiWax (Direct to Wikipedia Entries)

+ Surfwax News
In this case, mapped to a controlled vocabulary.

More examples:

+ Answers.com
As you type direct links to entries are provided.

+ AOL Pinpoint Shopping
Mapped to a controlled vocabulary

+ Become.com
As you type, note the suggestion links (will run a search) below the search box.

+ Snap.com

+ Yahoo/AllTheWeb LiveSearch Demo

+ Finally, AOL Search used to offer something similar to what Google announced today (as far as ticker symbols go) but we were unable to get it to work today.
—————————————————————————-
—————————————————————————-
*Btw, Barry also points out that Google Finance now offers a direct link to “unofficial” transcripts of conference calls. In April we posted about SeekingAlpha and also listed a couple of other services offering similar info.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 20th, 2006 at 12:53 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.