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The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Jan 29, 2007 09:12 AM
ReadWriteWeb writes "Search Engine Optimizer (SEO) Charles S. Knight has compiled a list of the top 100 alternative search engines. The list includes Artificial Intelligence systems, Clustering engines, Recommendation Search engines, Metasearch, and many more hidden gems of search. People use four main search engines for 99.99% of their searches: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com (in that order). But Knight has discovered, via his work as an SEO, that in the other .01% lies a vast multitude of the most innovative and creative search engines around."
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Intranet Vs Internet (Score:5, Informative)
All the large companies I've worked for don't care about world wide web search engines. Those engines used by the populace with the revenue coming from ads or 'paid search' or some indirect service business model. Now, a lot of companies are interested in Enterprise Search Engines and would pay a lot of money directly to a search engine company to come in and set up the technology to do intranet searches.
The engine we currently use at my fortune 500 company sucks. I mean it is the worst. I would rather have a blindfold on with stumps for hands trying to type in an estimation of the internal IP address than use our search engine. That said, I have been told that we investigated using "Google Technology" although my superiors soon found that it wasn't at all better than what we already had. And so I've heard of a few others that have doubted Google's ability to dominate in a closed domain. They are clearly the winners in an open domain internet search but I haven't seen anyone take advantage of it as well internally
So while the external market may be broken down 99.99 to 0.01, the internal enterprise search side isn't that lopsided.
Two engines that I've used and found to be novel ideas are BrightPlanet's Deep Query Manager [brightplanet.com] and Collexis [collexis.us] (NIH demo [collexis.net]). DQM is able to extract data from databases that are available through search on the local page but are not indexed by Google. DQM has you create jobs since they take so long to run. Collexis can process raw text and fingerprint it, then compare that fingerprint to documents that have been fingerprinted quickly. Two ideas that Google, MSN & Yahoo! don't really cover. I find it odd that a site like Yoople (what appears to be a slow German Google) made it on this list but not DQM.
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Could be worse, you could be using Slashdot's search function!
Re:Intranet Vs Internet (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
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Enterprise seach and this supposed top 100 (Score:2, Interesting)
Enterprise search is always difficult, companies like Fast Search and Transfer [fastsearch.com] specialize in it. They have all sorts of document filtering pipelines and customized database connectors to hook all sorts of data into their search system. It also scales quite will across a cluster.
On the specific topic of this supposed top 100 list, I notice it is mostly a list of what is 'neat' as most high ranking non-top 4 search engines are not listed. Neilsen and most other traffic rating groups would definitely not
Closed domains & this thing called "Access Rig (Score:5, Insightful)
The engine we currently use at my fortune 500 company sucks. I mean it is the worst. I would rather have a blindfold on with stumps for hands trying to type in an estimation of the internal IP address than use our search engine. That said, I have been told that we investigated using "Google Technology" although my superiors soon found that it wasn't at all better than what we already had. And so I've heard of a few others that have doubted Google's ability to dominate in a closed domain. They are clearly the winners in an open domain internet search but I haven't seen anyone take advantage of it as well internally
Closed domains have this thing called "Access Rights" - typically governed by either Novell Directory Services, or Microsoft Active Directory.
By and large, most enterprises don't want the janitor to be able to get on a kiosk terminal and surf the local search engine until he arrives at the document entitled FISCAL_YEAR_BRIBES_PAID_TO_MEMBERS_OF_THE_LOCAL_Z
So a "closed domain" document spider is gonna have to be granted Administrator/Supervisory rights to the authentication infrastructure [which is a HUGE security risk in and of itself], and then it's gonna have to keep track of the pertinent access control lists before deciding whether or not individual users have the right to view search results.
And if, as is typical, you've got four or five different authentication infrastructures in an enterprise [Novell Directory Services, Microsoft Active Directory, Sun iPlanet Directory Services, Oracle Internet Directory Services, etc etc etc], and if they aren't all tied together in some kinduva coherent LDAP framework, then that's just a massively complex project to even think about attempting to undertake.
Parent
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Unusual definition of "alternative" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Slifter.com [slifter.com], which is on the list, is pretty specialized. It's a mobile local product search. Its data comes from retailer inventory (not on the web) and it's meant to be run from a mobile device.
(Yes, I work for them.)
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But it also returns results from websites... Buy.com is not 'local' for me. It needs an option to choose 'brick and mortar' only or it's a pretty major hassle to use.
Re:Unusual definition of "alternative" (Score:4, Interesting)
Things like:
* searching by md5 hash to find where a random file on your hard drive came from
* allowing the specifying of precise image size or dimensions to find a specific image - e.g., google indexes an image, you see the thumbnail, want to find it, but the original site is down - why can't google show me other images that match the original size and dimensions of that cached image, to help me find a mirror?
* A search engine that rec0gn!s3s 4|_|_ 5p3c!4L cH4rAters
* filtering search results by IP range
* incorporating WHOIS details in search results (e.g foo +bar -foobar inurl:baz author:"J. Random Hacker")
and so on, ideas that I hear mentioned occasionally but that never seem to go anywhere. Most of them would be fairly trivial to implement - perhaps file hashing would be too CPU intensive, but it could be limited to smaller files, or less acpu intensive algorithm could be used.
Anyways, most of these I'd only use if they were added to Google - when it comes right down to it, database size is king with search engines - I'm happy to leave the meta/interactive/social/tagging side of things to the social bookmarking sites.
Parent
Don't want "Alternative and Creative" (Score:5, Insightful)
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my favorite alternative search engine: (Score:3, Funny)
when i go there, i simply forget what i was looking for. problem solved. because you can do anything at zombo.com
Since when is a "driven social content website"... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.digg.com/about [digg.com]
Re:Since when is a "driven social content website" (Score:3, Interesting)
The latest craze on the web is a 2000 Bloggers meme [abandonedstuff.com], where the photos of the blogmasters link to their website, giving people a random way to surf the blogosphere based on the looks of the author.
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Source code search engine? (Score:3, Informative)
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Works for me.
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Koders [koders.com] tends to be of use to me when I use it from time to time.
Do the wiki tiki. (Score:5, Interesting)
In all seriousness. There must be a reason why Google's floated to the top of the search engine love list, and I highly doubt it can be their (nonexistant) effective advertising campaign or their (also nonexistant) entertaining flashed-based website, because we all know people love those. No, I have to say that Google's got to have come up on top because they've been giving fairly accurate results. I know that if my search results were completely off, there would be almost nothing keeping me from switching to a new search; and, ironically, a search on Google for search engine brings up quite a few possibilities.
I see no problem here... I'll just move right along.
Re:Do the wiki tiki. (Score:4, Insightful)
"Accurate" had nothing to do with it. In a time when having keywords was the way to get to the top of the popular search engines, Google implemented a social ranking system; it really wasn't about being accurate so much as it was about "if everyone thinks you're link worthy, then you're probably an authority on some subject."
There's plenty of talk about community-supported information and social networks, but Google was the first serious attempt at utilizing that information way before such discussions were popular.
Parent
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Being popular doesn't mean anything. Look at Windows.
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Looking at some of the other search engines in the link, I can see some of them being quite hideous to type. For instance, www.boxxet.com. I know, doesn't look hard but I have a hard time with x sometimes.
Disclaimer: Some people would just say to use favorites.... I can
Excite? Altavista? (Score:3, Interesting)
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music map (Score:2)
http://www.music-map.com/ [music-map.com]
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Wanted: Old school search engine (Score:4, Interesting)
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How many of them... (Score:3, Insightful)
Find everything there is to know about "salshdot!"
Vast multitude.... (Score:2)
Call him by his proper title. (Score:2)
Alternative Search Biz Plan (Score:3, Funny)
Suspect source (Score:3, Insightful)
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If he's like any other SEO I've ever dealt with, he really only cares about manipulating page rank on Google, Yahoo and maybe MSN or Ask. Remember, those four engines are the 99%; The rest are toys to him. They are on his radar but not enough so he needs to care about them yet. (Again, remember why the SEO put out this PR piece; the point is to get you, the buyer of SEO services, to think that hi
"The web is 3D..." (Score:2)
Why at least one of those sucks... (Score:3, Funny)
innovative, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
They're innovative and creative, but nearly useless as well.
Did somebody just do a google search (Score:5, Funny)
The list is bad (Score:5, Informative)
In my book (and that of many others) Vivisimo is SE #2. And for good reasons too.
www.vivisimo.com
Re:The list is bad (Score:5, Informative)
however, their search engine can be found here: http://clusty.com/ [clusty.com] , which also appears to be in the list.
maybe you also want to re-bookmark it, as the page is much nicer
Parent
Many of these use a top-4 backend (Score:5, Informative)
A9 uses MSN or Google, SimplyGoogle uses Google, Soople uses Google, etc, etc, etc. They just provide a new or innovate method of presenting the results, the result order is still the same.
Also, Digg is listed? Del.icio.us? AOL???
I'd rather have a top-10 list of REAL alternative search engines, not "portals" and such written by a SEO of a search engine optimization company.
Actually used Digg a few times for search (Score:2)
Like the old yahoo and about.com, sometimes user selected content is better. Its different though because you depend on the description given to the article by the person submitting it.
Twenty bucks says (Score:2)
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Flawed search engines (Score:2)
Anyone else find that depressing? (Score:2)
Usage stats for some of those can't be too good.
Or maybe I'm wrong. But it seems like the big 2 or 3 would command 99.99% of all search traffic,
leaving very little for these guys.
Wayback Search (Score:2, Interesting)
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