The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines

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."

Since when is a "driven social content website"...

[Browzer]

a search engine?

http://www.digg.com/about [digg.com]

Do the wiki tiki.

[AlexanderDitto]

Ha, that's OK. I just use Google to find pages on Wikipedia. It's got all the information I'LL ever need from the internet.

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.

Excite? Altavista?

[xxxJonBoyxxx]

Just gotta ask: what happened to Excite and Altavista? Both of these guys still look up...

Re:Since when is a "driven social content website"

[saskboy]

Something like Digg, or Stumble Upon, is how many web users surf. It's the latest in Channel Hopping, and I think it's here to stay.

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.

Re:Unusual definition of "alternative"

[Odiumjunkie]

I agree, I was expecting better - in my opinion there are a host of features that people have been talking about for years that haven't appeared in any search engine I've used.

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.

Wanted: Old school search engine

[justthinkit]

I want a search engine like Google was before they bought into blogging and brought that bias into their search results. Search engines that bias results in favor of pages that are heavily linked to end up supporting the status quo over newer-but-better ideas/products/pages, the corporate bullies vs Hertz. This could be a great small business incubator. Does such an engine exist today?

Enterprise seach and this supposed top 100

[Anonymous Coward]

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 agree with this list. Not a big deal, though the title is definitely misleading.

Wayback Search

[zombie_striptease]

I don't see that any of these "alternative" search engines offer fixes to Google's current shortcomings (or at least the ones I run into). Personally, I can't wait til there's the Wayback Machine's [archive.org] archives are searchable by text rather than just domain. Hell, I'd even be appreciative if you could search for parts of domains. I can't overstate how often I'm driven crazy by remembering something from a site I saw long ago and not being able to refresh my memory because the site either went down or fell out of Google's listings.

Re:Do the wiki tiki.

[Thanatos69]

I don't know about anyone else, I just find google really easy to type in my browser. The sad thing is, I open up a browser intending to go somewhere else, I will start typing www.goo right away... just habit? I really don't know.

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 type quicker than I can find a site in my favorites and google has never really led me astray in what I have been looking for.

The Final Answer: The Top 100 Search Engines List

[CSKnight]

Hi - I am Charles Knight, the creator and keeper of this list of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines. I have *already* updated the list based up good feedback, which I shall continue to do all year long. If you would like a copy of the very latest version, just send me an email at: [e-mail]. The list you receive will have the revised Top 100, Search Engines not yet reviewed, Search Engines not yet released in Stealth Mode, Mobile Search Engines and the list of Search Engines that did not make the Top 100 list. Thank you for all of your helpful suggestions!