Luke Pensworth
Over the years, Google has added new products, portals, and services to its database and it’s hard to keep track of all these unless you have a specific portal that caters only to these types of results.
This is why Google had launched wdyl.com, which stands for “What Do You Love”. This service was a metasearch engine that accepts a single search request from the user and essentially works just like a search engine.
But what exactly does it do? What happened to it? Are we going to see a new or improved version anytime soon? Let’s talk about that.
What is What Do You Love (WDYL)?
Google had released wdyl.com that’s focused on bringing you services and products based on your search query. Google was also considerate enough to censor inappropriate words by returning results that are composed of things like rainbows and kittens in the background and such to cover inappropriate images.
Back when wdyl.com was still up (we’ll talk about why it ended later in this article), it pulls in results, photos, news, and other websites like Blogger and Picasa from Google’s tools and platforms. This means video results are limited to YouTube videos while photos are limited to images you’d find in Picasa.
Google didn’t hint something about including non-Google content but maybe they will in the future– we’ll never know. But it has to be noted that the reliability of wdyl.com is considered helpful if you’re using the right keywords as results vary greatly on the search term you put in.
How Users Welcomed WDYL
When WDYL was released, people thought it’s just a regular search engine. However, it’s actually a metasearch engine, which means it will pull out products and services according to the type of keyword you put in.
Similar to Google search, the wdyl.com homepage also has a single search box where you can type in your search query. And instead of a magnifying glass as a clickable search button, wdyl.com’s search button uses a blue heart button. It works the same and it’s simple and straightforward.
Just remember that some of the boxes such as Gmail, Calendar, and Chrome don’t really change very much when you throw out different search queries. But it’s worth noting that it still is worth checking at least.
To give you an idea of what the search results look like, here’s a result using the keyword “soccer”:
Here is a result using the keyword “monkey”:
Notice how the most popular email service, Gmail, is seen at the bottom of the listing. This clearly indicates that this metasearch engine may not be quite ready or that Google’s relevancy algorithm may not be there yet. And it justifies the reason why Google made no formal announcement before it was released.
But generally, results that are displayed are from different types of Google services as stated at the beginning of the article. Some of these even are from Google trends, Google books, Google Image search results, as well as sketch-ups. Plus, the content of the product can be easily distinguished by the thumbnail although there were known issues like images showing up were less relevant to the linked product or content.
Regardless, clicking the thumbnail will direct you to the service itself and that’s what mattered. It’s just unfortunate that searching WDYL.com now will result in a 404 response. Now the question is, can we expect a new and improved WDYL service in the future?
The Potentials of WDYL
The potential usefulness of the tool is pretty obvious: it is essentially a convenient, all-in-one portal that lets you access all of Google’s tools and platforms without ever leaving it. Now, this may be a tiny feature but this saves a lot of time.
The page, in general, is also easy on the eyes. Plus, the Google function that lets you interact with the results without having to leave the portal is super convenient. The user experience isn’t entirely smooth and there were still texts that look weird and irrelevant thumbnails on a handful of cases..
Even though it’s clear that this needs some fine-tuning and fixing-up, the fact remains that this is a more convenient way for people to access products and services and get the results they need fast.
With this type of service at your disposal, it’s going to be easier for everyone to find the best service or product for their needs. Unlike Google, you’d have to do some digging to learn more about a handful of products that promise you the best results.
If the algorithm is fine-tuned, you can save tons of hours and will never probably go through the millions of resources available on Google. In just 5 seconds, you’ll be presented with the best products in a heartbeat (pun intended).
What Happened to WDYL?
Google’s WDYL.com performed well since it was released in 2011 even though it wasn’t really publicly announced. And as expected, there were hiccups here and there though it’s nothing really serious.
However, in March 2016, WDYL.com started to act strange and returned HTTP 301 status code, redirecting you to Google’s homepage instead. And finally, somewhere in July 2018, the website started returning 404 codes and has never updated since.
We’re honestly still expecting to hear from Google about this and we’re also expecting to see some changes and improvements somewhere in the near future. But with what we have now, we can’t do anything but to wait.
