I received instructions this morning from MyLiveSearch.com with directions on previewing their Beta "live search" launch. After a quick install of their plugin for Firefox (this may not sit well with most users), I first searched for exact domain names -- i.e. "digg.com," etc. -- to see what results it would "trawl." Yes, they did really use the word trawl, or more specifically, "trawling the web." After what seemed like a couple of minutes of results gathering, the first thoughts I'm having on the search tool are pretty good. I really liked what I received for the most part - especially the ideas and concepts MyLiveSearch.com is trying to achieve. But MyLiveSearch.com has its flaws just as most other beta releases do. And, at least to me, it seemed like several features shy of a decent SEO tool and not a search engine. Here's what I liked about MyLiveSearch.com's search features.

MyLiveSearch.com has included a grouping method that allows you to view any domain's "network" of links. So, if you wanted to get a quick ten thousand foot view of your competitor's inbound link neighborhood, you could sort by clicking the right column as the illustration below shows.

Grouping by "Network"

You Can also click the "My Groups" link in the menu on the left hand side, top of page to scroll another way. Although the number of results for a query of "seoposition" was much lower than actual links, sorting and categorizing results gave an option other search engines just don't currently offer - unless you're counting Google Webmaster Console. ;-)

However, I think there are some flaws to MyLiveSearch.com's Beta version so far. I'll list a few I noticed right off the bat...

• Lists links within the results that make no sense or aren't a link at all. One example was that it included our social bookmark links that appear after each story on our site in the MyLiveSearch.com results. Why is this outbound link, a dynamic one at that, of value? Strange!
• I'm nost exactly sure what is being stored from each search query. I don't feel that a simple data mapping from the user's computer is sufficient enough, especially nowadays where everyone wants speed and instant gratification from search engines. Slow makes for unhappy searchers.
• MyLiveSearch.com would've performed extremely well over two years ago but Google, Digg, and a couple of other players are currently indexing and ranking results from "just published" web content in less than 1 to 2 hours. I've even seen some results from authority sites show up in as little as 1-3 hours in the SERPs! So, "live search" isn't all that obsolete now and is very close to live from several top search engines and their current indexing capabilities.
• The display of MyLiveSearch.com results were a bit clunky. I think they should really feature sorting, grouping, or whatever other features prominently and in an intuitive way. The current placement might be taking too much for granted with its current layout and lack of instructions or "guide words" for users.
• While I was writing this post and using MyLiveSearch.com, it locked up FireFox permanently - twice! I had to restart the session each time. Thank God I didn't have to type all this over again. Thankfully Drupal stored the information in cache.

I noticed Techcrunch also reported on the MyLiveSearch Beta yesterday and also pointed out some other areas of concern with MyLiveSearch.com.

I would say to the people behind MyLiveSearch.com to take all the points that users will throw at them over the next few weeks or months and prioritize them by opportunity. If they can slowly capitalize on missed opportunities and listen to beta testers, I think they'll will gain some forward momentum.

In the end though it's really hard for me to foresee a live search tool that uses the end users computer as the resource to fetch the results will go very far.

Does anyone have any numbers on Google's Desktop Search App? ;-) I uninstalled it about 3 hours after installing it because it was a resource hog.