We’re not sure precisely when a specific feature on Amazon.com “Search Inside the Book” info page debuted, but we haven’t mentioned on ResourceShelf and we think it’s worthy of your attention.

Most of you are aware that besides allowing users to search the full text of many books in the Amazon.com database, via “Search Inside the Book,” the service also provides a ton of stats about each title.

In many cases you’ll find some/all of the following:
+ Customers who bought this item also bought (this is available for most Amazon.com books)
+ A concordance (Top 100 used words in the book)
+ Citations to the book from other books in the Amazon.com database
+ Statistically Improbable Phrases
+ Capitalized Phrases

In addition to all of this info, you’ll also find “text stats and comparison info to titles in similar categories as the book you are reviewing.

Text Stats include:
+ Readability (Using 3 indices)
+ Complexity
+ Number of characters, words, sentences in the book.
+ Fun stats! (Words per ounce, words per dollar.

At the top of the Text Stats area look for a pull-down labeled “Compared with books in.” Default is “all books,” pull-down to select titles in related categories. Here’s an example.

See Also: Learn More about Text Stats

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 18th, 2007 at 1:43 am and is filed under Digital Repositories, Genealogy, Glossaries, Search News, Web Search. 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.