Will there be any alternative search engine to really challenge Google’s stranglehold in the near future? Will spam sites and parked domains continue to rate highly? Will we be able to search and actually easily find exactly what we are looking for? Will we be able to access a good range of valuable information on a topic without finding only those sites who have been successful in keyword and search engine optimization techniques?
Google Search does has a lot going for it. It is the most popular, many people are happier staying with something they are familiar with and it integrates with so many other highly used services, mostly its own. Google search did make search more effective and it does an fairly adequate job. Most people do not question it - it is just there. If they can’t find what they want users are likely to blame their own search terms.
Results based on keywords are not reliable. Take the word ‘Paris’ for example.
You would assume that such a search would result in travel sites and information on the capital city of France but the Google results are interspersed with Paris Hilton (lots of Paris Hilton) and ads for Disney and Las Vegas Hotels.
Alternate Search Engines
Checking out other search engines for the word “Paris” produced these results:
Semantic Search
“Semantic Search” attempts to incorporate “meaning” into the process by taking account of context and the interrelationships between words rather than isolated keywords and how backlinks there are to a site. For example:
Hakia Search Engine Beta
Human Edited Search Engines
Human edited search engines are being touted as a better system. Quality control issues plague current search engines - fully automated systems not being able to filter out all spam sites or those of little or no value.
Wikia Search Alpha
Launched in January 08 is a search engine in the making - if there are enough contributors to develop it into a comprehensive search engine. Its concept is that of “trusted user feedback from a community of users acting together in an open, transparent, public way”. Users are urged to help with the “mini articles” that appear at the top of popular search terms.
Mahalo
Another search engine that is developing around human submissions. Mahalo employs editors, paid contributors and volunteers to add sites and pages to the search engine.
The more approved links you recommend the higher your rank on the Mahalo Social Leaderboard. Link submission is achieved by searching for a specific term and then adding relevant sites. A curator managing the results for that term then decides if the link is to be rejected or added to the results page under “recommended links”.
Mahalo has just added a social profile component Anyone can now create a profile, recommend links for a search term, “make friends” and share recommended links. You can add your blog address and profiles from social networking sites such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, StumbleUpon, LinkedIn,Twitter and Pownce.
Mahalo Follow is a new toolbar for Firefox that allows you to view Mahalo’s search results next to the results from the major search engine of your choice or have them appear in response to pages you view on the web. You can submit recommendations using either the Mahalo toolbar or directly from the site.
It must be remembered that both these sites are in their early days of development and are not yet going to produce the range of results expected from fully developed search engines. I like the concept though and will be monitoring their progress.
Visual/Clustered Search Engines
Information is presented in a two dimensional ‘map’ rather than a one dimensional list.
Quintura
A visual search engine based on Yahoo! search. A search for a specific term will display a tag like collection of related terms surrounding your search term. Hovering over one of these related terms will display a similar cluster of terms relating to this term and so on. I have used Quintura on my Blogging Mentor Award page and here is an embedded example for the search term “Paris”
Others:
- Kartoo - Flash-based visual search
- Boogie
- Kool Torch
Metacrawlers
Meta crawlers do not crawl the web themselves but send out searches to other search engines to give you blended results. Example:
Clusty
For me the challenge is to remember to use alternatives to Google search more;to discover which produces the most relevant results and which suits my searching style. I would be interested to hear your suggestions or views on alternative search engines.
Popularity: 18% [?]
Thank you for including Quintura into your list! Please correct the hypelink.
Apologies Yukov - hyperlink now changed.
Hi Sueblimely,
I have on occasion encountered a lot of useless results lists from a search, and you’re right about the thinking that the key word used was faulty. I know that’s how i thought at the time and still do.
This would be very helpful, thanks very much.
This is my first time here, and I wouldn’t have known about it if I didn’t follow up on the avatars of those who dropped by my site. The site name is familiar and I’m certain I’ve come across a comment you made at some other blog. I usually follow through all visitors till very late at night.
I’ve noted the search engines you cited. I also liked what I read in your profile, count on me to return and establish roots here.
–Durano, done!
Durano lawayan’s last blog post..Angelina Assesses Assistance
I do think that vertical search engines play a vital role on the Internet, and will show an increasing popularity. I would like to suggest one particular specialized search engine - http://www.indeed.com. This site is a specialized search engine to look for jobs. It is the most comprehensive search engine on the web for jobs.
There is certainly a place for comprehensive search engines on particular topics.
I am pleased you found this of use Durano and look forward to seeing you here again. I know what you mean about following visitors etc late into the night!
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Hi Sue,
Good post. It’s easy to forget that there are alternatives to Google with the monopoly they have. I tried clusty ages ago and liked playing around with their results but it’s easy to go back to using Google full time.
I read a good post on search engine land just recently talking about the complexity of language and how search engines need to get better at disambiguating intent. It goes on to talk about the “wisdom of crowds” and dynamic suggestions based on what other people click on - similar to Amazon. Here it is rather than me trying to summarise it inadequately :))
http://searchengineland.com/080201-070940.php
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Interesting article Christine although I would rather I had some control over what the search engines send me rather than them working out my search habits and then feeding me ads based on that
Following on from Christine’s comment, I find Amazon’s suggestions pretty poor. Just because I’ve read one book by an author, doesn’t mean I want to read all 25 of her other titles.
It would make me very wary of a search engine that used the same techniques, though I grant you there is considerable room for improvement.
Mahalo got hold of one of my posts quite some time ago and sends a regular trickle of visitors for that, but apart from that I would say I rarely have hits from any search engine other than Google in one of its forms.
One thing I find strange with Google is that if I enter a term in French to google.co.uk I get entirely different results from putting in precisely the same term into google.fr and vice versa, even though I have both languages ticked in my preferences. I find it really quite irritating.
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Cool. I wonder where I saw a similar list.
Mihaela Lica’s last blog post..The Small Fish Eats the Big Fish Paradox
There are quite a few similar lists but I thought the search results I showed spoke for themselves
It was Phil Butler who got me interested in finding out more about search engines after reading a few of his posts on the subject. http://www.phil-butler.com/
I did not realize there were so many search engines around. I never saw any traffic from other than google to my site either. So I never bothered looking for them I guess.
Good article btw.
Olivier.
Thanks Olivier
I am still finding it hard to get out of the Google habit to use some of the other search engines more.
Nothing lasts forever. Remember the days when Yahoo! was *the* search portal (long gone), what about AltaVista (they were going to take over the world), AlltheWeb (AllButForgot). Just as Microsoft is on the way out, so Google’s last days will come…
db
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When google started it was only the geeks that used it. I know I was one of them. This is typical of a brand that is due to hit the big time. It is used by a small group who feel they are in the know.
Eventually this can lead to mainstream use. But to get there the product (in this case SERPS) have to be good. Google, so far has been the best at producing good results.
Human edited directories always seem to eventually fall into dissarray. ODP and yahoo are prime examples. The ODP editors mostly became elitists and yahoo is paid. Both eventually did not put out good results even though they started off great.
So a new model is needed.
One thing I do notice is that google is constantly squeezing in more and more ads. The page is beginning to get cluttered. They started off on the foundation of a clean and simple page. We’ll see how this affects them
Phil