A data search engine

May 26, 2011

Zanran is a new search engine that helps you find data.

It indexes items that have tables or figures that seem to display data.  It looks to be significantly more useful than a general search engine when it’s data you want.

Search results are displayed in the manner you are used to.  Except on the left side there is an icon that indicates the type of document.  Hovering over one of those icons shows you a sample of the document — a sample that includes what it suspects is relevant data.

For example, if you search for “equity risk premium”, you’re able to view a number of graphs of the equity risk premium in seconds.

Bugs

  1. Some items include “n more results from this site”.  This is meant to be a link to those results, but the link doesn’t work at the moment.  They’ve promised to fix it.
  2. If you search for “burns statistics”, it lists things having to do with statistics about burns, and hardly anything from my company.  How dare they.

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