According to recent Hitwise stats, the estimated breakdown of search volume by search engine is as follows:
* Google: 71%
* Yahoo: 18%
* MSN: 4%
* Ask: 3.45%
Chances are, over 70% percent of the people who read this blog post also use Google for most of their search queries. Without a major development in search or a radical new search method, chances are that Google’s share of search won’t likely decrease in the near future. This is partially because search habits are habitual and partly because Google still seems to provide the best results.
I’d like to dedicate this post to shedding light on a few search engines other than Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask. While many of these engines don’t have the resources of their larger competitors, many have taken a more creative approach to helping users find what they are looking for on the Web.
Dogpile is a meta search engine that evaluates the results from all the top search engines (Google, Yahoo! Search, Live Search, Ask.com, About, MIVA, LookSmart, and more) and returns the best results after removing duplicates. The search engine results pages (SERPs) mix sponsored listings in with organic listings, although the sponsored listings are labeled as such. Overall, there’s nothing too unique about this search engine or the display of its results.
Mahalo is a human-powered search engine/directory where editors review various web resources and build search results phrases for various topics. When you perform a search on Mahalo, a pre-built search results page will appear displaying information and links to resources on that topic. In the event that a results page hasn’t yet been created for the topic searched, a results page appears with similar searches terms that Mahalo does have information on.
iRazoo is another human-power search engine that relies on user ratings and recommendations to improve search results. When users click to view a website, they do so in the iRazoo frame. Users can browse the website and select whether or not recommend a particular website. What’s more, iRazoo offers incentive for users to help rate websites. Users earn points by helping provide recommendations. The more points a user has the better that user’s chance is to win gift certificates and prizes. I personally think the search results aren’t great and the site looks a little spammed.
ChaCha is a human-powered search engine that is only available through test messaging on your mobile phone. All you really do is text any question that you can think of to 242242 and you’ll get an answer back in anywhere from a couple to ten minutes. After you send your question, it’s sent to a community guide at ChaCha who is the most knowledgeable in the particular category. For my test of ChaCha, I asked, “What are five other human-powered Internet search engines?” The answer came back about 5 minutes later and said, “I couldn’t find anything about other human powered search engines, so you’ll just have to keep asking.” I should note that, In the past, I’ve had a better luck with ChaCha.
This is a pretty short list of search engines. In the past, I’ve also written a bit about Curl. There are a ton of other search engines out there, although none that were much better to mention. Comment back if you can think of any outstanding SE’s.
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