Raw Sugar
The World Wide Web contains masses of information, all piled up on top of each other, and the purpose of search engines is to sift through everything and find what you want. Raw Sugar has some unique search options that make finding exactly what you’re looking for easier.
After you do a simple search with Raw Sugar, you can refine your search by clicking on another tag that appears on the side of the screen. Raw Sugar has a hierarchical tag system, so that it will add the secondary tag to your search and look within the first search’s results. This is one feature that sets it apart from other social bookmarking sites.
In addition to saved links and other common features, Raw Sugar also has “directories.” Directories are webpages saved on your profile to use as resources. You and everyone you are linked with can use them. The sites you choose as directory links also appear in the whole system’s set of directories. If you’ve ever used a regular search engine and noticed under the search bar categories such as “entertainment” and “lifestyle,” those are directories.
The search options are definitely what make Raw Sugar unique. You can choose to search only within your directory, within the whole system, within everybody’s directories, and so on. You can limit your search to blogs, only. Raw Sugar also has watchlists and you can subscribe to other users’ picks.
Raw Sugar really likes tech and computer industry stuff. One of the biggest tags is “companies,” and under that you find tags for all the major tech companies. There are lots of sites about entrepreneurship that are popular on Raw Sugar too.
When you submit a link, you tag it and can also add a description of the site. Tagging and writing descriptions are important for those who want to market their sites. When you are picking a tag, there is an auto complete function that pulls up similar tags, and this can be a big help when choosing the right ones to draw traffic to your link.
You can import and export links from your computer’s browser, and you can also connect your Raw Sugar account with an existing del.icio.us account.
Raw Sugar does not interfere with what is submitted. In their “terms” page, they say that they have a right to remove any content that they don’t like, but it doesn’t look like they exercise that right very much. Since it’s a service for everyone to use as they please, Raw Sugar will pretty much let you post anything.
