In Focus

Your guide to alternative search engines

Leah Messinger
Search Posted on May 21, 2008

New categories

There's a search engine so popular that even Webster's and the Oxford English Dictionary have accepted its transformation from a noun to a verb. Perhaps you've heard of it? (Hint: It starts with a "G," ends with an "oogle.")

Hitwise recently reported the hardly surprising stat that Mountain View-based Google in April received nearly 70 percent of all U.S. searches. With numbers like that, you might wonder why the entrepreneurs behind new search startups even bother getting dressed in the morning.

It turns out that not only are the founders of new search companies hatching schemes to go up against Google, but in the process, they're also inventing entirely new categories of search -- some of which can, in turn, create entirely new marketing opportunities.

Many of the new search engines rely on sharing information, either among users in the case of social search, or among developers as in open source search. Two other search categories focus more on borrowing than sharing. Metasearch takes advantage of searches conducted by third-party engines, and visual search delivers the results of various searches in a more intuitive, eye-catching format.

Here's a primer for the new search age.

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Comments

Kurt Gross
Kurt Gross June 9, 2008 at 1:52 PM

Good, concise article about alternative search options. Thanks.

My beef with Google is basic, i.e. when anyone searches for a word or a group of words, my position is that websites that have those EXACT same words in their URL address should ALWAYS appear before ANY other sites that do not contain said word(s) in the URL address.

I don't think that's too much to ask, but obviously it is?

For example, I own the website www.uri-the-feast.com and www.urithefeast.com, yet a search for "uri the feast" will not yield either of these sites (I also own the DOT info versions as well).

What makes this markedly poignant is that sites with no apparent connection to these words do appear, some of them on the first page.

One might ask the logical question, "How can this be?"

As fo rme, I see no reason for this that makes LOGICAL sense, therefore I can only assume there is a hidden agenda, and we all know why anyone would hide an agenda, right?

Let's just say that the truth would not be defendable, and leave it at that high road position for the purpose of this comment.

People or companies who have alternative motives that fly in the face of logic always fail. The day always arrives when they trip up.

Liars eventually get discovered, the snake always crawls out from under the blanket of the snake oil salespeople and those who take advantage of people always get discovered. It always happens, eventually, so Google is a foregone conclusion, it's just a matter of WHEN, not IF.

How can I say this? Because it's the law of sowing and reaping. There are opinions and then there are laws that do not change. So, you can bank on Google crashing if they stay the course they are on.

I'm not radical, I'm espousing common sense, that's all. It's a law of our earth, and just like the law of gravity, it cannot be repealed or ignored.

I do not wish Google ill-will. I'm just stating facts here. I'm not prophesizing or complaining. I'm just saying that hidden agendas always get exposed and there is always a crowd of people around to applaud the day when the sun shines on the scoundrels.

Sadly by then, there are other scoundrels around who have yet to be discovered, thus the truth to Cher's 60's song, "And The Beat Goes On".

Meanwhile, I search for a service that can return information that I've searched for. I understand capitalism enough to know that "paid for" sites whould also appear, but when they smother out logic, I'm outta there.

Hmmmm, maybe that's a search I should try? Any bets on whether I can find that?

Thanks for the article,

Kurt Gross
near the Great Smoky Mountains and in pursuit of common sense and the path to prosperity

Mark Moran
Mark Moran May 21, 2008 at 12:20 PM

Leah,

I'm always happy to read someone writing about alternatives to Google. Anyone who thinks it's "Game Over" in search has a poor understanding of history. We created FindingDulcinea.com because we know that most users cannot always find the information they are looking for by using general search engines. To eliminate the clutter, we've created a custom search engine with 20,000 hand-selected URLs that is live on our site, and will be separately branded as "SweetSearch.com" in about two months. We have also create a Guide to How to Search the Web, which lists dozens of alternative ways to search the Web, including many of those you covered in your article. Here's a link to that guide.

http://www.findingdulcinea.com/guides/Technology/Internet/Dulcineas-Guide-to-Searching-on-the-Web.html?xa=1

Alan Chokov
Alan Chokov May 21, 2008 at 11:59 AM

I thought your article was concise and accurate. There is niche for alternative search engine including those that are more defined and provide single destination platforms

Alan Chokov
Alan Chokov May 21, 2008 at 11:54 AM

As per your article on Alternative Search Engines, when you have a moment please view www.efinanceportal.com; it is a patent pending interactive, multilingual Financial, Business & Educational Portal with six internal search engines; 50,000 definitive categories; featuring 14 industries and support of 99% of the world's spoken languages. Registered Contributers have the ability to submit content from their personal computer directly to te Portal in their language of preference, within seconds (24/7)