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Top 10 Alternative Search Engines
Posted by: Rob Lavender on Sunday, February 21st, 2010
"Search is evolving far beyond Google's classic 10 blue links."
You may be surprised to hear that the second biggest search engine after Google is not Yahoo or Bing but actually You Tube. The way people are choosing to find content online is changing and everyone is calamouring to create the next Google to meet the demand.
Google realized the changing landscape of search when it provided a link to search for 'Images', which presents an image search to complement the traditional text search. As more and more services are providing an API to link in to their services it's getting easier for 3rd party developers to create new and exciting ways of searching content, hence the recent trend of new ways to search for content online.
What is vertical search and why it's important?
"Vertical search, or domain-specific search, part of a larger sub-grouping known as "specialized" search, is a relatively new tier in the Internet search industry, consisting of search engines that focus on specific slices of content. The type of content in special focus may be based on topicality or information type. For example, an intelligent medical search engine would clearly be specialized in terms of its topical focus, whereas a video search engine would seek out results within content that is in a video format. So vertical search may focus on all manner of differentiating criteria, such as particular locations, multimedia object types and so on." - Wikipedia
Search is going vertical. Most of the search engines that I've listed in this article are targeting specific content or a specific audience. It's all about the niche.
The major search engines Google, Bing and Yahoo are termed horizontal search. They encompass the mass market and therefore sometimes the results for any given search term may not actually be that relevant to what you're looking for. Vertical search is moving towards taking out the guess work for you, delivering search results closer to what you're looking for.
One change you may have noticed on Google is geo-targeting. For example, if you're looking for a business or a service like 'Dentist' Google will look at your IP address to determine your geographical location and deliver search results that more specifically meet your needs.
All of the major search engines are recognizing the shift from horizontal search to vertical search and have there own custom search platforms for developers to create their own custom search offerings.
- Microsoft - Live Search Macros
- Yahoo - Search Builder
- Google - Custom Search Engines
Alternative Top 10 Search Engines
1. Twitter
Ok, so not many people would see Twitter as a search engine but it does something that Google can't yet do, it enables people to search in real time. As people are posting using twitter other people can find those posts instantly.
"Results in real time are more and more relevant. To be in the know, more and more people are turning to real-time search resources." Margaret Manning - www.readingroom.com
This was highlighted earlier this year with the news story of the pilot in New York who managed to land his plane on the Hudson river without any serious injuries to his passengers. People could follow the story in real time as it unfolded online, through twitter people could find links to videos uploaded from peoples mobile phones at the scene.
2. Scoopler
Scoopler is another real-time search engine that's taking on the might of Twitter.
First Impressions: "This is awesome. If you or your clients have products or provide a service in a particular market type in a keyword to do with that market or product and instantly you'll see a whole list of posts from Twitter and other sources showing you what people are talking about. Maybe this is only really useful for large companies that are well known enough for people to write about them. For smaller companies it's going to take a little bit of lateral thinking to make this tool really useful."
3. Wolfram Alpha
Another alternative search engine is Wolfram Alpha which aims to answer questions rather than just return URL's
First Impressions: "I was a little lost as to what to search for so being prompted by the suggestion box I typed in 'Newcastle'. The results were really interesting facts and figures about Newcastle. I guess this search engine would be a little more useful if I actually had a question to ask."
4. spezify.com
An innovative and alternative visual search experience. The original idea was born from conversations that Spezify founders Per Persson adn Felix af Ekenstam had about seeing search results more like a 'Moodboard', a collection of images pasted on a board that helps designers get inspiration. Per says, 'At the same time open API's for many popular services and search engines started to emerge. The ambition was an instant overview of both images and other medias, like a slice of the whole internet on a certain subject, and from other sources that 'just' Google.'
Spezify currently pulls its results from Amazon, Twitter, Digg, yahoo etc.
First Impressions: "This is great. It's a visual representation of searching on the web. It's a lot more interesting the just using Google, and fun too. I can really see how I could use this for inspiration when I'm researching an idea, they have done really well to realize their ambition to resemble a online search mood board."
5. viewzi.com
This looks really good and a lot of fun. From a quick peek point of view it's not instantly understandable, the interface and options suggest that there's a lot more to play with to refine how your search results are presented. I don't have the time to explore this at the moment so I'm going to have to make a mental note to come back and take Viewzi for a proper spin around to block.
6. picclick.com
For anyone that uses E-Bay this search site will be a God send, as long as you live in the US! I've spent many evenings with bleeding eyes I've scrolled pages and pages of E-Bay listings to find those perfect items. This tool presents a more more intuitive way of searching E-bay listings and even presents really clever options to narrow down your search. Just a shame that we'll have to wait for a UK version.
7. Briteclick.com
'Rightclick or Briteclick, as we like to call it, your way to better online search', even though the video delivers an extremely cheesy catch phrase, this looks really useful. Especially where you're searching for flights and you can bring up comparision sites with prices without leaving the page you're on. The future looks Brite.
8. Tin Eye
http://www.tineye.com/cool_searches
Marketing Spiel - "Our goal at Idée is to make images searchable.
Idée Inc. develops advanced image identification and visual search software. Our technology looks at the patterns and pixels of images and videos to make each image or frame searchable by colour, similarity or exact duplicate.
Idée created TinEye, the world’s first reverse image search engine. Submit an image to TinEye to find out where it came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or to find higher resolution versions. TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords or metadata to search for images."
9. Eurekster
Marketing Spiel - "Eurekster allows you to build a custom search portal, or “swicki,” around any topic of your choice. Rather than returning millions of results like a generic search engine, swickis learn from the search behavior of a community of enthusiasts and experts, making it easy for you to quickly find what you’re looking for within a particular topic."
First Impressions: "I would need to be convinced that this would be useful to me."
10. Rollyo
Marketing Spiel - "Rollyo is the fast, easy way to create personal search engines using only the sources you trust.
Are you tired of wading though thousands of irrelevant search results to get to the information you want? Ever wish you could narrow your search to sites you already know and trust? With Rollyo, you can easily create your own custom search engines - we call them Searchrolls - and explore, save, and personalize those created by others."
First Impressions: "Looks ok. Not really my cup of tea."
Summary
I'm really encouraged that there are usefull alternatives to Google. While Google is very useful, the more you use it the more you realise it's limitations, and it becomes frustrating when you can't find any useful websites. The future of search is bright, there's a whole smorgas board of search engines to choose from and new ones being released every day. All you need to do now is to keep a list of these fantastic new resources...maybe I should create a search engine that will find other search engines?
About the author
Robert studied graphic design and then interactive design at college and university. Initally finding his feet in the world of work creating graphics for television idents, before turning his hand to creating the company website. This began his love affair with the web. Rob loves to get stuck up to his eye balls in photoshop layers and occasionally likes to frazzle his brain with PHP and Javascript.
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