Algorithmic-based search. This is best exemplified by Google's automated "page rank" popularity engine that has tremendous power and scale to index vast amounts of unstructured data.
Human-mediated or "Social Search." Online start-ups such as Mahalo, Chacha, and OneRiot are using people to help create more intelligent results. Whether paid or unpaid, there is usually a credit system for helping to deliver search results and experts emerge from the community.
Structured search. Organized and tagged content databases focused on specific industry or vertical areas (think of Thomson Reuters or Bloomberg desktops). For more on structured versus unstructured data read a synopsis by the father of data warehousing, Bill Inmon.
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