As we all know, Google represents the dominant force in search engines globally. Even more so here in Sunny South Africa. And Google does what they do so well – hence their success.
Whilst Entelligence has suffered at the hands of Google South Africa’s questionable ethics, on the whole, Google is the King of Search. But do you always find what you want? And with Search Engine Optimization becoming a reality – are we seeing optimized results or the right results?
Can other search engines do it better? Recently there was alot of hype about the new CUIL search engine (www.cuil.com) – whilst results are displayed in a new, consumable manner, the actual quality of the results are not good. Yet. I hope they get it right. Something that search engines haven’t addressed well is that we all think differently. Are you a big picture person or a details person? How would you like your information delivered today?
There are many alternative search engines out there, but after fiddling for hours, I’d have to say that the only real serious contender to Google, right now, is Wikia.com – yes – this summer, from the makers of Wikipedia, you get a complete search engine too. Better yet, it’s all based on open source search technology!
What makes a good Search Engine?
Here’re my thoughts on what makes a search engine good:
- New information is indexed quickly. This is where Google leads. Yahoo & MSN get there eventually, but Google consumes new data at a rate that no one has matched. Wikia’s distributed spider network is a good start towards competing in this respect.
- Results are delivered fast. I don’t want to wait for a minute. I want information & I want it NOW.
- The results delivered are highly relevant to my search criteria. Still lots of room for improvement here. Search engines still seem to match our keywords to keywords within site content. What about on a conceptual level? What about at a factual level?
- Result layouts make sense to me. To Me. That’s the key. We’re all different. I want the results in formats that I like. Yes, I may want 5 conceptual results, 5 results that people I know accessed recently, and 5 factual matches to my keyword.
Welcome to a new era of search – it’s around the corner – who’ll be first?
by Sean Riley
