Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Lexis Web Search

LexisNexis has put out Lexis Web Search in beta release: http://www.lexisweb.com.
The Lexis Web product includes important, legal-oriented Web content selected and validated by the LexisNexis editorial staff. You can trust that all content has met LexisNexis criteria for being authoritative and accurate.
I see that my Real Estate Space blog is included in the index. I also saw JD Supra, Connie Crosby, Slaw and Goodwin Procter in the search results. I assume they have included most law firm websites. They even included Kevin O'Keefe's Real Lawyers Have Blogs.

I could not find a list of the included sites.(KM Space is not one of the included sites.)


At first I thought Lexis had merely wrapped a frame around a Google Custom Site Search, like I did when I put together the KM Sites Search. But I saw some great tools to help you deal with the search results:
  • Navigation based on Lexis Search by Topic or Headnote legal classification system
  • Navigation based on Lexis LexisNexis SmartIndexing Technology
  • Navigation based on legal citations
  • Recommended list of sources to search in LexisNexis
Those are the kinds of things I saw in great enterprise search tools like Vivisimo. Maybe this is a by-product of the partnership among Vivisimo and Lexis for Interwoven's Universal Search.

It is a great free product from Lexis. (It is odd to put "Lexis" and "free" in the same sentence.) There are links to premium lexis content and a Google adwords panel. Perhaps that will be enough to support the creation and maintenance of Lexis Web Search.

Thanks to Kevin O'Keefe of LexBlog and Leslie Street of Due Process: The Georgetown Law Library Blog pointing out this new service: Lexis Offers (in Beta) Legal-Specific Search Engine for the Web.

5 comments:

  1. Thank you for the write-up. I didn't my blog was there! Will have to take a look.

    Cheers,
    Connie

    ReplyDelete
  2. Connie -

    For search tools I always run a search for my name to see what comes up. I know what I have written and a good sense of what has been written about me.

    One disappointing thing I noticed is that the top search for pulls up my old Goodwin Procter .com listing. Since that page has been gone since mid-October, I though the Lexis Web search engine has not been updated since then. But then your Slaw post about me leaving also comes up in the search results.

    Probably just an indexing quirk.

    Tom Mighell pointed out that he reviewed Lexis Web back in September: Targeting Legal Authority with LexisWeb. So this is not a brand new tool.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for the heads up on this. Looks like an interesting tool.

    How do you feel, and how do you think the various bloggers feel about this content being used by Lexis? Even though it's free, LN is using others' content to market their company.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Toby -

    I have no problem with links to my stuff on pages with advertising. Heck, that is what Google does. My content comes up on a Google search and Google wraps ads around the page name and a snippet of content. Google is doing the same, except with the "sponsored links" area going to Lexis sources.

    I do have a problem with sites that cut and paste my content and repackage it on their site.

    I do have a problem with sites that wrap a frame around my content and sell advertising space.

    I like sites that drive traffic to my site. I am always surprised that anyone finds my ramblings to be interesting enough to package.

    ReplyDelete
  5. content selected and validated by the LexisNexis editorial staff

    I'd be real careful about relying on this assertion. More and more LexisNexis' "editorial staff" are overseas contract hires in India and the Philippines.

    ReplyDelete

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