Rival search engines leaving Google in dust

Rival search engines leaving Google in dust
September 21, 2006 BY ANDY IHNATKO

Maybe I've just lost track of the dates, here, but shouldn't a massive backlash against Google have begun, like, three years ago?

Mind you, it's not like people haven't been making an effort. The huddled masses began a half-hearted attempt to raise the red banner of revolution after the company agreed to play ball with China's internal censorship of the Internet.

But the tizzy quickly passed, and if anything, Google-worship has now expanded from the metaphorical to the literal, with the founding of the Church of Google (www.thechurchofgoogle.org (http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org)).

Sure, the traffic on the church's message boards is light, but really, can 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status be far behind?

So I suppose it's up to me to get the ball rolling with some simple advice: There are plenty of situations in which Google shouldn't be your go-to search tool.

Wikipedia (www.wikipedia.org (http://www.wikipedia.org)) is a controversial resource, and for good reason: the single most important feature of a reference tool is simple, implicit trustworthiness. The fact that anybody can add, change or delete information -- and that corrections can be undone by anyone for any reason -- means that Wikipedia will never have the authority of a conventional encyclopedia. Not in its current incarnation, anyway.

If you stop trying to think of the Wikipedia as the Internet's Britannica, however, and think of it as its own unique resource, it emerges as an invaluable tool. It compresses the Internet's entire thinking and understanding of a topic into a single page -- and there aren't any ads, hidden or otherwise.

Google for "plasma tv," and you'll be slogging through hundreds of links to online stores, sprinkled with some buyers' guides. But Wikipedia will immediately explain the concept to you, topic by topic.

When your problem starts with the words, "I need to learn about" Wikipedia is usually the best place to start, keeping a grain of salt handy.

Unless you're involved in some kind of drinking game at a particularly polytechnic university, you perform a Web search hoping for the highest quality links, not the greatest quantity. So when I'm looking for practical information, I usually turn to del.icio.us before I head to Google.

Actually, del.icio.us (yes, it's a URL) isn't a search tool. It's a community bookmark service. When you come across a Web site that you want to remember, you can post the URL to your del.icio.us blogroll instead of bookmarking it locally; this way, you don't have to keep the bookmark files of three computers and a smartphone synchronized.
The service encourages you to tag each bookmark with descriptive words to help you organize 'em. I just click on my "boards" tag and bang, I've got all of my message board links right in front of me. But by default, every user's bookmarks are public, and anybody can perform a systemwide search using tags.

Search for "photoshop tricks," and you won't get thousands of random Web pages that happen to contain those two words.

No, del.icio.us will return pages that real human users tagged with that description, and the fact that they bothered to bookmark it at all means it's almost certainly worth checking out.

Google doesn't validate its content. Del.icio.us' search results bear the individual, independent votes of millions of people.

What about alternative "real" search sites?

Maybe this is just a case of personal Google burnout, but I actually find myself turning to Windows Live Search (live.com) and Ask.com more than the service that became a verb.
Google became Google because it roundly kicked the collective metaphorical heinies of every other directory and search engine that preceded it. The kill was a quick and efficient one, and the emperor was very correct in awarding Google both of AltaVista's ears and its tail.

But that was a long time ago. Both Ask and Live have caught up to Google, and in certain ways, they've even surpassed it. Both sites organize their results into a sidebar that understands the context of your search terms.

Ask.com, for example, knows that "charlie brown" is associated with Charles Schulz, Peanuts, Woodstock, Calvin and Hobbes and more, which means that one click allows you to say "Oh, yes, I mean that Charlie Brown," and zone in on related topics (the TV shows instead of the comic strip, say).

They also use different algorithms to rank their results, so a valuable site that Google buries on page 27 might be the second or third hit from Ask or Live. And the reason why the top Google results are usually online stores is because commercial sites use complex voodoo to make sure they get ranked high.

Google's ranking algorithm is a secret. But hey, so is Oscar balloting. That doesn't mean that companies don't try to weasel the system and that they're not successful.

I'm not suggesting that we all storm the gates of Google and convert their headquarters into the Glorious People's Freedom Palace (open 10-4; closed Mondays and for private functions; $20 suggested donation). Just don't allow your Googling to become so hardwired into the Internet experience that you're unaware of all the links and sites you're missing.

Andy Ihnatko writes on technical and computer issues for the Sun-Times.

Fine, I go around saying use ask last month that they give better results then google and get laughed at. Some blogger posts this and he's a hero.

In any event, it at least shows, once again, I'm in tune. But, the rest of the net is slow to embrace or even see what is obvious most of the time because of "force of habit" and resistence to change.

Another proud noppid moment that I get to celebrate alone in my office with the shades drawn. hehe

I've just recently begun experimenting with ask, seems like a pretty good tool

It's not just a matter of whether Google's search results suck (they do) for the moment. They've done a helluva job at branding and, like it or not, in excess of 60% of my traffic still comes from Google. It's encouraging to me that that number has falloen in the past year from more like 80%.

But from Google's perspective, they are running out of time. MSN Search is not there yet but they have truckloads of money, in cash just lying around waiting, behind them - more than Google can bring to bear in spite of their phenomenal success - and Vista is nearing completion with integrated search part of the package. Kids in primary school, high school, and university are the MSN Messenger generation - it loads with Windows when they boot up and it stays there, with links to MSN portals and MSN Search, the whole time they are on-line. For them, MSN Search will be the default - unless Google gives them a serious reason to switch - and right now Google is not delivering that reason. They can only rest on branding and marketing for so long.

I didn't laughed. I have been thinking since Big Daddy (I feel like a whore whenever I use those two words) that google's results are too irrelevant. I even mentioned this to my own users and while they agreed that google's results are now pretty much useless they still believe they yield the better results of all the search engines. I'm no expert on the matter but I'm pretty sure that there's some deep psychology at work on this.

Ok, so to clear up my confusion... what does all of this mean?


stick with google?
experiment with others?
in your opinion (anyone's) is google still the better of all of them, or not?
if not, which do you recommend?
Would this be better in another thread?

A brief recap of my search engine usage:

I started using Yahoo back in the mid 90's because it was my school's homepage. Once I got an internet ready computer at home I of course use Yahoo out of habit. I dabbled with Ask once in a while but wasn't all that impressed.

About the time Gmail came out I made the switch to Google. Google had always given me pretty decent results. Lately Google is crappy results are often spamtastic.. and I hate spam.

Here's how I feel about Google: I think Google is trying to do the right thing in the search engine marina at the same time you have to consider Google is the largest most popular search engine on the market. They therefore have a pretty large target on their back, black hat SEO techniques are rampant. I've lost respect for a lot of "professional" webmasters whom use shady methods of SEO such as hidden links. Before Google was the "big daddy" hidden links were rare and normally only on seedy sites that I wouldn't visit anyhow (or would I? : :D )

Here's why the switch to Yahoo, Ask, or even MSN is big jump for me. Gmail it's just awesome , I've gotten so used the system it seems like second nature to me. Most of my domain emails forward into Gmail at some point. I like to be able to search all my mail and get accurate results. At the same time, I also have most of my domain emails setup as aliases in Gmail.

Has anyone seen Yahoo mail "beta"? 1/3 the screen is advertisements. When I read email, I want to read. it not spend time mentally blocking flash advertisements. Say what you will about Google, but they've done advertising right. Text ads easily ignorable. :)

Another "crux" as of late is the Google toolbar? Has anyone noticed my spelling has been better? That because Google's toolbar has built in, in-line spelling checking. I installed the Yahoo toolbar the other day and that feature was sure missed.

This has become longer than I intended but..If I could get a decent webmail app & a spellchecking toolbar, I'd leave Google in a heart beat.

The answers to all of your questions depend on whether you're asking then from the webmasters' perspective or the websurfers' perspective.

If you're a webmaster, you can't opt out because almost all webmasters get the vast majority of their search engine referrals from Google these days, like it or not. Therefore, whatever their rules, you have to play by them. The only thing you can do is whatever you can to rank well in MSN Search and Yahoo as well.

If you're talking about end users (surfers), you can personally try spreading the word that Google isn't what it once was and that often one might get better results from MSN or Yahoo. The problem is that at the moment, it's hard to make that claim that strongly. Google definitely sucks. MSN might in time be a worthy alternative but they are still a work in progress. Yahoo is fine for shopping but sucky for a lot of other things.

This all reminds me of the days just before the fall into oblivion of AltaVista: We are ripe for a new more efficient idea. Will it be MSN Search? That's very possible. It could also be someone else with a fresh face and a better idea. I don't hold out a lot of hope for anything other than MSN currently.

Sorry, I should have clarified, I'm asking from a webmasters' viewpoint. Thanks for addressing both sides though!

Funny what you said aboveMSN might in time be a worthy alternative but they are still a work in progress.

I have more pages indexed on MSN, and higher, than both Yahoo and Google put together. Go figure

I also do well in the MSN index but they aren't yet as good as they need to be at detecting spam and keyword stuffing. And they are not yet delivering the traffic I'd like to see.

On the other hand, the percentage of traffic from MSN Search has been steadily climbing over the past year and remember that most of that time they were in beta. MSN is up to about 20-30% now for me.

Well, almost everyone and his dog here in Mexico uses MSN/Live messenger, it's the defacto standard for IM comunications and it has been for quite some time now. Yet almost no one I know uses MSN / Windows Live search.

If someone right now comes trough the door asking for the best way to search the web, I could point to places like Windows Live, Yahoo, Ask, or even Altavista, and more likely than not they will invariably will ask "and what about Google?".

Try to explain to the M's that the most popular search engine in the market is "broken" and most likely they will greet you with a sceptical look. Almost the same look you were granted years ago when you first told them that Google was better than altavista, inktomi and yahoo put together.

We're harvesting our own bitter crops right now it might seem.

smart dogs ;)
Sorry, I couldn't pass it up.

I remember using Alta Vista years ago. Has it gone defunct? I've never heard of inktomi.
Yahoo still gives me the best results for my searches for the mostpart, however, I've noticed that I can find things on Google that I can't find on Yahoo, and vice versa. Why is that? I was under the (apparently false) assumption that all of the search engines carried the same search results.

Before the Big Daddy, I always found Google the best for searching for information; Yahoo was the best for searching for products and services.

hmm, i get 80% of my traffic on some of my sites from google..

maybe its just "broke" for you :D

hmm, i get 80% of my traffic on some of my sites from google..

maybe its just "broke" for you :D

80% is an arbitrary number. 80% of what?

I get about 75% of my hits from ask. But that's arbitrary too.

But as i said before, I can hang out on forums (only my two and two others; dp and here for fun and give free help to others) and do mostly nothing, not brag about anything I sell or my services I can sell and the bills are paid.

Others have to actively hawk affilitate sales by jumping from forum to forum. Hummmm, yeah, that's success,right? :rolleyes:

How many forums do you have to post on to try and look like you have spent that 150.00 on something worth while trying to recover your investment? I sure have heard it's alot. :eek:

hmm, i get 80% of my traffic on some of my sites from google..

maybe its just "broke" for you :D

You don't read very well, do you Loco?

As I said earlier, I am still getting the majority of my traffic from Google. So what? For major search terms, Google currently delivers a mixture of credible and valid results mixed with crap or old pages, some of which no loger exist. Google even includes results for my sites which haven't existed since the summer of 2005. For most of the past 5-6 years, I have ranked in the top 10, and usually the top 5 and frequently the number 1 and 2 positions, for my search terms, through one Google update and algorithm change after another - until Big Daddy. This was done with no black hat or even gray hat SEO, no link schemes other than a brief dally with the Digital Point Coop which I discontinued months ago.

Since Big Daddy, my results fluctuate wildly from day to day and from data center to data center, with no rhyme nor reason.

My story is neither unique nor unusual - the same thing has happened to hundreds of other site owners who play by the rules and have reaped the benefits of doing so for several years.

THAT is why I and others are saying that Google is broken. It has nothing to do with whether Google still delivers 80% of your traffic. As noppid said, 80% of what? It has to do with results fluctuating all over the map on an almost daily basis and crap for search results where prior to Big Daddy the search results made sense.

I'm not sure that this belongs in this thread or not, but I'll chance it.

I noticed something odd... or at least out of the ordinary from what I'm used to seeing while surfing the net...

From my browser, I clicked on a link to a site I used to frequent, and found that it's not there any longer. Also saw that I got this info from MSN Search, whereas it used to always be Yahoo search bringing these results.

SO I did an arbitrary search... just bogus web addresses (yes I have too much time on my hands today :rolleyes: ). 6 out of 10 searches yielded the results from MSN search while 2 produced results from yahoo, and the other 2 from Google.

Does anyone else find that odd? Or is it just progress for MSN?

Perhaps it means something, but we need an example of what ya did to understand. Since this is about search engines in general, I think it's ok to explore some ideas for comparisons.

I'm confused about what you did, Ohio.

Were you entering bogus URLs into your browser? If so, and you use a URL without http:// or ftp:// as a prefix, your browser should send you to whatever search engine you have designated as the default.

Or are you saying you were using different search engines to search for the same bogus URL(s)?

Perhaps it means something, but we need an example of what ya did to understand. Since this is about search engines in general, I think it's ok to explore some ideas for comparisons.
Great. Well, I did just what I said... I typed in bogus .com and .net addresses. 10 different ones, to be exact. And got the results stated above. I don't remember which ones they were, but I'm sure (or at least hope) that if I did it again, I'd get the same results, or similar. In fact I think I'll do it again.

But I need some kawfee first...

I'm confused about what you did, Ohio.

Were you entering bogus URLs into your browser? If so, and you use a URL without http:// or ftp:// as a prefix, your browser should send you to whatever search engine you have designated as the default.

Or are you saying you were using different search engines to search for the same bogus URL(s)?

What I did, was click on a site link (in my favorites) that I used to visit frequently, as I said. It wasn't there, but the result came from MSN, when results used to always come by way of Yahoo. Yahoo is my default search engine tho I use google when I can't get what I need from yahoo.

I was surprised, so decided to put it to the test, producing the results I stated above.

Edit: I wasn't using a search engine at all. I was typing them into the address bar of my IE browser

:confused:

I don't understand how that can happen, Peggy. What browser is this? What do you have set as the default search engine for that browser - are you certain it is Yahoo? If so, it should always go to Yahoo for searches.

ugh, I was just talking to my brother about this and he said I may have a virus. Because as you stated minstrel, all search results should come from my default SE, which I already knew. That's why I was so surprised that msn and google would produce the search results.

Possibility?

The browser bar results are going to go to the search engine you have set.

The reason you got hits is likely, even though those sites are gone, going to be of pages that mentioned those sites in the past. So I don't think the results would be "bogus". Something at some time on in those search results had reference to those sites.

Browser hijack or virus is likely.

:confused:

I don't understand how that can happen, Peggy. What browser is this? What do you have set as the default search engine for that browser - are you certain it is Yahoo? If so, it should always go to Yahoo for searches.

I use IE, same as you. and yes I just double-checked, it is yahoo. It always does (did) go to yahoo for search results. I'm confused. But like I said, I'm being told it could be a virus. But I've never heard of a virus doing this.

The browser bar results are going to go to the search engine you have set.

The reason you got hits is likely, even though those sites are gone, going to be of pages that mentioned those sites in the past. So I don't think the results would be "bogus". Something at some time on in those search results had reference to those sites.

Browser hijack or virus is likely.


Virus is what someone else is telling me too now. I was just so surprised by the results that I thought I'd bring it here, since I trust y'alls opinion on something like this.

Plus if anyone else has this problem, it'll help them as well

Except a virus or spyware usually sends you to some crappy ad-filled search engine, not one of the legitimate ones.

Do you have the MSN and/or Google toolbars installed?

Well now, that's what I thought too. Yes I have the google toolbar installed

http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b91/babydoll2u/SC.jpg

I notice that the latest version of Google Toolbar was more aggressive than previous versions in "phoning home".

I disabled that using Mike Lin's Startup Control panel - freeware and highly recommended:

Startup Control Panel v2.8
Mike Lin
http://www.mlin.net/StartupCPL.shtml

thanks, I'll look into that.

Have you installed any MSN or Mircosoft software lately? MSN Gaming zone, MSN messenger, MS Money, Office.. Anything?

Microsoft installers often have a hidden option to set their search engine as the default in IE & FF. That's most likely what happened.

Dan if that's the case tho.... why would some of the searches have yielded yahoo results, and google results? I'm thinking a virus is the more likely culprit. :mad:

Dan if that's the case tho.... why would some of the searches have yielded yahoo results, and google results? I'm thinking a virus is the more likely culprit. :mad:

Sorry, I didn't read the whole thread. It's quite possible it's virus or spy/malware.

Download, install and run these programs in safe mode (http://www.pchell.com/support/safemode.shtml):

AVG Free (http://www.filehippo.com/download_avg_antivirus/) (Anti-virus)
Spybot (http://www.filehippo.com/download_spybot_search_destroy/) (anti mal/spyware)
Adware (http://www.filehippo.com/download_ad-aware/) (anti mal/spyware)

If you aren't already running a firewall, I'd suggest downloading & installing the free version of ZoneAlarm (http://www.filehippo.com/download_zonealarm_free/)

Hope it helps, :)

Dan

I agree with everything Dan said except, the AV. I have seen many viruses punch through avg.

I suggest this... http://www.free-av.com/

Really? I have AVG running here and also on all of my sons computers (three of them) - they aren't the most careful when it comes to clicking on things on IM or in emails but since I installed AVG no infections whatsoever.

I combined AVG with Windows Defender and Zone Alarm on all four machines plus my fiancee's and that has kept all 5 computers clean and sober for 9-10 months (that's since I did the switch-over from Norton which was getting worse and worse as a resource hog -my sons managed to slide a virus each past Norton).

I have a good firewall and also have Adware installed. Problem is, sometimes my YIM won't connect with the firewall up, so I disable it to connect YIM, then re-enable it right away. BUT, eeeeeeeeeeeevery once in a while, I do forget to enable it again. :o

I have a good firewall and also have Adware installed. Problem is, sometimes my YIM won't connect with the firewall up, so I disable it to connect YIM, then re-enable it right away. BUT, eeeeeeeeeeeevery once in a while, I do forget to enable it again. :o

Peggy, a word of advice: Don't ever disable your firewall to let a program run. Often times the offending program which won't run with the firewall on is mal or spyware. In this case Yahoo Messenger isn't.

I'd bet the reason why Yahoo won't run with the firewall on is because you won't let Yahoo auto updater connect. Look in your program settings of ZoneAlarm.. If a program called y updater, Yahoo Updater or something similar is set to deny Yahoo Messenger won't connect.

Hope it helps,
Dan

I don't have Zone Alarm, but I did reset my firewall settings this morning, to let YIM connect.
Thanks anyway ;)

smart dogs ;)
Sorry, I couldn't pass it up.

You wouldn't believe the tricks they do ;)

I remember using Alta Vista years ago. Has it gone defunct? I've never heard of inktomi.
Yahoo still gives me the best results for my searches for the mostpart, however, I've noticed that I can find things on Google that I can't find on Yahoo, and vice versa. Why is that? I was under the (apparently false) assumption that all of the search engines carried the same search results.

Altavista's still working, no one seems to care tho :p. Inktomi was used for Lycos search I believe, it was bought by Yahoo! a couple of years ago I think, my memory fades at this time of the night. And yes, your assumption is false, but no need to worry tho, differences in content for the most part are becoming less evident. The google case is one of the most palpalble ones in the last few years.

Before the Big Daddy, I always found Google the best for searching for information; Yahoo was the best for searching for products and services.

Between those two, this assumption still rigns true. I find Windows Live Search making very good advancements (for information) tho.

hmm, i get 80% of my traffic on some of my sites from google..

maybe its just "broke" for you :D

The point doesnt even have anything to do with traffic driven to my websites. The point is I don't trust the google results as beign relevant. But out there people still uses google even when they have to wade trough 6 or 7 pages at a minimun to find the information they think is relevant. Beign as counterproductive as it is right now, google to me is clearly broken. Oh, and most of my traffic is direct, if anyone cares.