HotBot Returns

iosphere writes "Terra Lycos put out a 'new and improved' HotBot today. The interface has been redone with search results courtesy of either FAST, Google, Inktomi, or Teoma." HotBot was one of my favorite search engines, back in the day.

Inktomi is the same as it always was

Since it isn't using its own engine, you should be fine...

Yes it is. What many of us think of as the "HotBot engine" is actually the Inktomi engine, which is still available on HotBot and is in fact the default. (The others are FAST [alltheweb.com], Teoma [teoma.com], and the yardstick by which all others are measured [google.com].)

Oops!

Guess what happens when you type HotBox.com instead of HotBot.com? Not cool when you're at work.... :-(

Hopefully this new and improved HotBot will be comparable to Google in speed. Old one was slow, I thought.

Why not all 4 at once?

I saw this on Google News and went to check it out, but got annoyed quickly when I couldn't search all four engines at once with collated results. It can't be that hard to do.

Plus they dumped at least 10 cookies on me. Google only uses one. I'll keep Googling...

too slow?

Most including the old Hotbot were too slow. This seems to be much zippier under the Inktomi engine, but we'll have to see how it compares to Google. Cool thing is that it will use the last search engine you clicked so if you like the Google engine better than the Inktomi engine, then that's what it will use.

Re:too slow?

But why would you visit HotBot.com to use Google when it's still directly there at Google.com?

This site seems to be a "keep-alive" of the hotbot.com domain name, rather than a serious attempt at creating a useful site. Lycos is just hoping to get a little money out of the fact that people still have bookmarks to hotbot.com from back in the day.

So?

I thought it was generally accepted that Google is far-and-away the best search engine. Do others have their advantages in certain areas or something? I wouldn't know, as I only use Google, but why should we care that hotbot's back?

Re:So?

If you are searching for something that is pretty rare, such as a friend of yours, there may not be more than a few relevant pages in the entire web. No search engine covers all the web. It is possible that Google may find one or two results and another search engine such as Fast or Inktomi may find one or two different results. It happens to me pretty often.

Re:So?

Google's selling point is it's "PageRank Technology" which is a formula primarily based on the theory that the best sites are the sites that are linked to by other high-rated sites. This has been a great advancement over the serarches that ranked only by the number of times the search words appeared on the page, which frequenly returned garbage results.

The problem is that as we get more dependant on Google, we are ignoring the sites that Google chooses to low-rank. This promotes a "rich get richer" attiude, as the top rated sites for any given keywords on Google get a lot of free traffic as a result.

To put it another way, since TechTV.com is linked to by many people, links on that site carry more weight in Google than a link in the average person's blog. Therefore, the selection of Site of the Nite and Download of the Day from the crew on "The Screen Savers" and resulting link boosts the PageRank value of the site being linked to. However, since Megan Morrone and Martin Sarget use Google to find the sites and programs they'll recommend, a loop is created.

Slashdot suffers from the same problem. A linked-to story on Slashdot gets a Pagerank boost, how many /.'ers find the stories they submit, or the sites with which to look for stories to submit, via Google?

Google's sources for what to consider the top links are influenced by what are presently the top links.

Is google becoming a central point of failure?

By that I mean, look at the number of search sites who used to spider for results, and now just re-sell google links. I know that with bookmarks, blogs, etc. the web won't just shut down without a search function. But, what happens when someone hacks the DNS or DDoS google off the planet. Will this affect people severely?

Would google be an ideal grid computing idea? Would you donate disk space / processor cycles to run distributed google?

P.S., first post?

Re:Is google becoming a central point of failure?

What's more scary than a DOS of Google is a false Google. If Google's database were to be comproimised with false data, it would have a huge effect of directing traffic to and away from sites accross the board.

Clunky

The javascript on their search page is slow and clumsy in Mozilla, but works fine in IE. Strike one against Hotbot.

Strike one against Mozilla.

Why is IE's ability to process Javascript faster than Mozilla Hotbot's fault? Sounds like a weakness in Mozilla to me...

Re:Strike one against Mozilla.

I am not an expert in this area, but I think the following information is accurate.

MS Internet Explorer uses many proprietary html tags and attributes.

Mozilla was designed to read all of the W3C Standards for website design.

If a site displays well on IE but poorly on Mozilla, it is often the case that the designers of the site focused on developing for IE and gave much less thought to being a standards-compliant site.

I don't know if this is the case with Hotbot, but this is an example of how a website could gain a "strike" because Mozilla does not display it as well as IE does.

BTW, I use Mozilla 1.2.1 on W2k at work, and I love it. It is so far superior to IE, IMO. The only feature I miss is the Google Toolbar, but Mozilla has a more robust search tab that can be configured more than the Google bar.

search boxes on other sites.

One good thing HotBot did is promote the little HotBot search box for people to include in their web pages. Good promotion of this sort of thing acts as a nice utilitie for web masters and greatly expands their reach.

Copernic is the way to go

Copernic you search all including google and hotbot plus many more. and its free for the standard version and has its own web interface.

HotBot Memories...

"HotBot was one of my favorite search enginges, back in the day."

Yeah, but now you have to admit, Hemos, that as search enginges go, Google really holds the cake.

Tech Support

I used to work tech support for an ISP 4 or 5 years ago and there was always this one customer that would call me saying "my hotbot don't work."

I had trouble convincing him there was nothing I could do about it.

Hotbot Returns?

More like hotbot gives up. This is just a front end to better search engines, and you can't even search more than one at a time.

It's got all these nifty "skins", but who needs a skin on a search engine?

I say go to the source, and give the advertising dollars to the search engines that actually give you the results!

Re:Hotbot Returns?

Hotbot never was a search engine. From the day it launched, it did nothing but provide Inktomi's results. (Inktomi has always had the odd business model of powering other people's sites while refusing to run an inktomi.com serach engine for themselves.) Over time, other parters have come and gone, but there has never been a true Hotbot search engine.

My first search...

1. Google
Web Images Groups Directory News-New! Advanced Search Preferences Language Tools Advertise with Us - Search Solutions - Services & Tools - Jobs, Press, & Help ©2002 Google - Searching 3 083 324 652 web pages
http://www.google.com/ - December 9, 2002 - 3 KB

2. Google ... ©2002 Google - Suchen auf 3 083 324 652 Web-Seiten ...
http://www.google.de/ - December 6, 2002 - 4 KB

3. Google Groups
Search message board communications or browse for topics by category. ... with Us - Search Solutions - Services & Tools - Jobs, Press, & Help. ©2002 Google - Searching 700 000 000 messages ...
http://groups.google.com/ - November 13, 2002 - 6 KB

4. google

http://www.google.com/custom - October 16, 2002 - 12 KB

5. Google ... ©2002 Google - Nombre de pages Web recensées par Google : 3 083 324 652. ...
http://www.google.fr/ - November 29, 2002 - 4 KB

6. Google
New!
http://www.google.co.jp/ - November 11, 2002 - 4 KB

7. Google ... ©2002 Google - Suchen auf 3 083 324 652 Web-Seiten ...
http://www.google.ch/ - November 30, 2002 - 4 KB

8. Google ... ©2002 Google - Ricerca su 3 083 324 652 pagine Web in corso ...
http://www.google.it/ - November 29, 2002 - 4 KB

9. Google News ... Health. About Google News. Text version ...
http://news.google.com/ - November 27, 2002 - 63 KB

10. Google Toolbar ... The new Google Toolbar increases your ability to find information from anywhere on the web and takes only seconds to ...
http://www.toolbar.google.com/ - November 9, 2002 - 5 KB

Previous | Next

Google and HotBot Google have different results.

Googles results are different than the HotBot Google results. Here's an example.

• Google with 130 results [google.com]
• HotBot Google with 41 results [hotbot.com]

I'm guessing that HotBot is using the Google public API's, and that is returning different results than the standard Google results?

Not a search engine..

It's just a metasearch as it's been said, so basically it just steals the results provided by real search engines. To me that is the equivalent of sticking slashdot in a frameset with your name on the top frame, and claiming you have a new news site for geeks. The only reason anybody makes a big deal out of hotbot is becasue it's part of the terra lycos web portal, you could easily write your own metasearch engine in under 30 minutes..

Support a true badass search engine and continue using google. Google has become synonymous with internet search engines, and provides USEFUL features (news search, image search, topic centric search engines, and more. I'm sure google isn't cheap to run or maintain, and we should all be damn thankful it exists,(remember life before google?).

If you use Lycos' "web portal" then fine, use hotbot, ya big cry baby, but please, please, PLEASE don't abandon google by switching to another search engine.. we need google, so support it.

Re:Not a search engine..

To me that is the equivalent of sticking slashdot in a frameset with your name on the top frame, and claiming you have a new news site for geeks.

To me, it's like getting people to submit tech news to your site, linking it, and encouraging them to discuss. Yeah, that would be stupid.
[/playful troll]

Search Engine Competition is Good!

It's a great idea to have as many search engines out there doing it as many ways as they can come up with. Unfortunately, HotBot isn't doing that at all. They're just using other search engines' results as a way to somehow put the domain to use and serve ads. This does nothing to improve the search experience for users and will likely only minimally benefit the company itself.

About the only thing I can see that could be considered innovative on this site is the ability to change the appearance by changing colors or uploading a CSS file. That could be beneficial for branding with ISP install CDs or something, but that doesn't even compare with using the Google API and making something that looks totally unique. I'm not convinced these guys have gotten the word that you have to do something that's really worthwhile to make money on the web now.

Aunt Enginges

> HotBot was one of my favorite search enginges, back in the day.

dear aunt enginges,

it was very nice to see you at thanksgiving at hemos' and i am looking forward to eat at your house this christmas. i asked santa for a new kernel this year, but i have been naughty so i don't know if he'll bring me it. i read an article you might like because it talks about enginges, like your name you know, it is on slashdot, search for hotbox. take care, i love you, eat well.

cousin vicki

I still don't get it..........

HotBot was one of my favorite search engines, back in the day.

When exactly was this day that people always talk about?!

HotBot has ALWAYS used other results

I'm not sure why everyone is condemning HotBot's upgrade as a shift to "mere metasearch". The site was born out of Wired Mag's ancient search engine expose article, where they all decided Inktomi was the one to use. HotBot has been powered by Inktomi since day one, they're just offering other sources now.

Not Mozilla compliant?

When I tried to skin Hotbot, it tells me to download IE or Netscape, and doesn't give me the skinning options. I'm using Mozilla 1.2 (the version I use at work). Not a very auspicious beginning for a brand-new site.

less color

Aww I'll miss the retina searing green red and blue primary color clusterf*ck they used to be!

Non-American users are redirected

Note that the link to www.hotbot.com in the article redirects non-American users to the version for the country near them, and the versions of Hotbot for different countries don't include the meta-search feature. For example, here in the Netherlands, I'm redirected to www.hotbot.lycos.co.uk [lycos.co.uk]. Non-American users who want to see the search engine reviewed here should go directly to www.hotbot.lycos.com [lycos.com].

No^WFew tables!

Check out the source to the new hotbot site. It seems the majority of the layout is done using standard CSS instead of tables.

This is encouraging - looks like TerraLycos is continuing the work that was done with Wired [wired.com]'s conversion to a table-free design. Too bad it doesn't validate [w3.org], though.

Re:Must be...

Seriously though, why do you need anything other then google?

Then why do we need anything other than Windows?

Google is great, and I probably won't use anything else in the near future, but it is always dangerous to let any one entity control so much.

Re:And the benefit...

Synergy.