ubExact launched its “direct navigation, action-based search engine” in beta.

The human-edited search engine categorizes content into actions: See It (reference), Do It (entertain), Shop It (buy), and Find It (navigate). The idea is to enable searchers to navigate to a site based on what they hope to accomplish there, making it (ideally) unnecessary to memorize web addresses.

Users select one of the above actions, then type a query into the search box. For example, a search for “starbucks” filtered by “Find It” brings up two URLs: starbucks.com and hearmusic.com, a Starbucks-owned music site. Associated website fees (both sites are free to peruse) and company locations (“Seattle” for the former, “Online” for the latter) are also listed.

One setback to building a human-powered search site from scratch is that ubExact lacks the speedy indexing technology of rivals like Google, Yahoo or Microsoft.