Currently in beta, Firefox 3 has introduced some fab new technology to the browser location bar.
Users can perform a keyword search through their entire web history from within the location bar. This makes for a fast and convenient way to navigate back to pages that have previously been visited.
The technology goes way beyond auto-complete by offering a keyword search of URLs, page titles and tags from previously visited pages. Results are ordered by 'frecency' - a combination of how recently and frequently you have visited a page (with an adaptive learning algorithm further tuning results for relevancy).
For example, let's say that you have been browsing through Tesco Direct and found a Whirlpool washing machine that you like.
You decide to check back with your partner before making the purchase.
Autocomplete on the URL isn't too helpful... you'd have to know that the URL http://direct.tesco.com/q/R.200-9621.aspx related to your chosen washing machine.
But type 'Tesco Whirlpool' into the browser and Firefox locates the page you want...
Normally this is the kind of heavy-lifting job that people would have taken to a search engine.
Last year, Atlas published an analysis on 250,000 clicks on paid search ads on Google Adwords, Yahoo! and MSN. The report, 'Paying for Navigational Search', showed that 36.9% of clicks were searches on brand terms by repeat visitors to a website.
The big brands moaning about Google's relaxation of brand protection rules in the UK should be praying that Firefox 3 really takes off - the potential is here for companies to get chunks of relevant traffic direct from the browser, just as nature intended!
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