Searching the Deep Web

When we first reviewed Qitera, we already liked it a lot. Qitera's main emphasis is on creating a search engine for your bookmarks, no matter whether the bookmarked sites were on the public Internet or hidden behind the paywall of a for-profit database. Qitera is a very capable social bookmarking site with all the standard features you would expect, but what really sets it apart from its closest competitors is its search functionality.

Search Engine Integration

Whenever you do a search on Google or Yahoo after installing or updating the Qitera plugin, the top three search results from your bookmarks will automatically appear at the top of the search results. These results will include your own bookmarks, as well as bookmarks from your friends and colleagues on Qitera.

As Qitera's Joerg Lamprecht points out in the announcement, we often search for the same things over and over again (and so do our friends). By first displaying search results from sites that you have already bookmarked before showing results from the Internet, you can break this cycle and get faster access to a set of search results that you have already marked as relevant by bookmarking them in the first place.

From a business perspective, this integration with Google and Yahoo also makes perfect sense for the company. By seeing the Qitera bookmarks every time you search, you are far more likely to return to Qitera and make it the default app for your bookmarks.

Last month, Qitera also released a better integration with Yahoo's delicious. You can now import your delicious bookmarks to Qitera, though sadly, this is only a one-way street so far. We would also like to see the possibility to sync your Qitera bookmarks back to delicious.

In the last two months, Qitera has also addressed a few of the other problems that we discovered when we first tested the site. You can now, for example, get an RSS feed with the latest updates from your social network on Qitera, and the service now also finally recognizes duplicates.

Coming Soon: Qitera for the Enterprise

Qitera has also announced that it is developing an enterprise version of its service, which it will be launching at Cebit in March.

First of Its Kind?

We think this integration with Google and Yahoo is a great step forward for Qitera, and we are not aware of any other social bookmarking service that has created a similar plugin. If you haven't tried Qitera, we definitely think it is worth a try.

For a more in-depth look at all of Qitera's features, please refer to our review of the service from last December.