Charles Knight at Read/Write Web has an interesting post about the top 100 alternative web search engines. That's right, the top 100...there are many more that didn't make the list.
I took Mr. Knight's list plus my own list, mashed them together and categorized the search engines by major area. Entrepreneurs are trying everything they can think of to beat Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Live. Here are some of the approaches and the companies that are trying.
User Interface (UI) enhancements attempt to improve the user experience and visual representation. Companies working in this area include; Snap, Live.com, and SearchMash. Another, Quintura, presents search results in a "visual cloud" that clusters results by meaning and intent. AskVox and Ms.Dewey use talking females to coach you through your search.
Technology advancements include; Hakia , Powerset , Lexxe, Mindset, Surfwax, Swoogle, which search based on meaning or intent. I have seen the Powerset demo, and if the model can scale to handle billions of documents on the web, Powerset has a good shot at breaking out and becoming a star.
Cluster Search - Vivisimo and Ask.com present results in clusters that allow you to refine or expand your search. Also see; Clusty, Kartoo, Mnemomap, Mooter, Webbrain, and Wisenut.
Social/Personalized Search - Findory, Jookster , Swicki , Collarity, and Rollyo do personalized or social search that present results based on your personal preferences or circle of friends. There are also a bunch of companies doing "tag" or "voting" based search...companies like Technorati, Digg, TailRank, and others.
Mobile search engines include; AskMobile, Boing, Google Mobile, Windows Live Mobile, Yahoo Mobile
Shopping Search - Like, Slifter, TheFind
Visual or Video Search - Blinkx, Clipblast, Ditto, Exalead, Girafa, Pagebull, Retrievr, Riya
Continuous search engines store your search terms and update you whenever something new fits your search. Examples are; Allth.at, Swamii and Searchbots.
Meta search engines submit your query to multiple search engines and present all the results on one screen. This has got to be the most over done, and marginal category in search. Examples include; Dogpile, CrossEngine, Gnosh, GoshMe, GoYams, Grokker, Ixquick, Mamma, Mrquery, PlanetSearch, PolyMeta, Pronto, Srchr, TurboScout, Whonu, and ZapMeta.
Vertical market segment search has lots of players in each category;
Venture Capitalists, over the past 5 years, have poured billions of dollars into search engine startups hoping to hatch the next Google. There are probably more than 200 search engines today, trying all sorts of different approaches to search. Still, nothing beats the traditional big three of Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Live.
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Great list. Thanks Don.
Posted by: jf.sellsius | February 28, 2007 at 09:55 AM
Don,
I can't believe you left out local and shopping. Those are the two most interesting categories of search on the web today.
Posted by: Ethan Stock | February 28, 2007 at 11:48 AM
You forgot the search engines that use less not more technology, namely the human edited search engines like Bessed (http://www.bessed.com).
The reason so many of these search engines have never been heard of is that they're not noticably different or better than the big three you mention, and they're trying to make their name based solely on technology.
But people still want recommendations, and that where a human-powered search site like Bessed can find an audience.
Posted by: Adam Jusko | February 28, 2007 at 01:53 PM
Ethan, I agree that local search will be big. I simply ran out of time and energy to make that category and find all the search engines that do it. I will try to update it later.
Posted by: DonDodge | February 28, 2007 at 03:47 PM
Does anyone know about the web site Monitor.hr? This post is listed on the front page of the site and I am getting thousands of visits from Monitor.hr.
It is a very large European (I think) news site. Anyone know more?
Posted by: DonDodge | February 28, 2007 at 03:52 PM
Don,
I think you vastly underestimate Dogpile and the position of meta search engines in the market. According to Hitwise, Dogpile is ranked 10th in overall search with .57% market share, just behind Microsoft Live in 9th place with 1.06% market share. The guys at Dogpile are laughing all the way to the bank: No development costs to speak of, they piggyback off all of the hard R&D work the big search engines do, and they have no stock holders to answer to. Microsoft should be so lucky!
regards,
Ira
Posted by: Machefsky | February 28, 2007 at 04:13 PM
Jeez, I had no idea there were so many search engines out there...just as amazing is that so many are willing to spend (waste) so much to fight over mere "search crumbs"...
...and actually, the secret to becoming one of the "big boys" of search involves just two relatively simple steps...
#1: Offer a search capability and user experience at least comparable to what the leaders are providing (which a fair number of Charles' and Don's listed companies are already doing)...
#2: Convince many 1,000's of print, radio, TV, and 'net news reporters and media sources to fall in love with and write glowing reviews about your search engine (you know, like Google received).
And there you are--instant leader!
Posted by: Steve Morsa | February 28, 2007 at 04:30 PM
Monitor.hr is a Croatian news portal. ;) He links different things that might be of interest for the news readers.
Posted by: D. | February 28, 2007 at 06:12 PM
it amazes me how little I need _any_ of these sites. I've tried to like them, but I just don't have the need.
Someone must, right? some of these guys have decent traffic.
I occasionally get a click to my site from Dogpile and a couple of the blog searchers.
I consume internet video, but what's the use case? googling "mentos diet coke" or "24 tv" works just fine.
My search problem comes purely when I can't articulate my thoughts well enough to know what I'm searching for. That's when I ask my wife. She tells me what my thoughts are ;-) and I go back to google.
Maybe this is mismatch comes because they (those with which I'm remotely familiar) seem to have started bottom up with the technology (Riya/Like, Powerset, Oodle) and try to invent the application.
The blog, code, and health searchers seem to have started from the top down. Blog search turns out to be easy for Google. I'm not in either of the other two niches.
Posted by: rick | March 01, 2007 at 07:36 PM
Hi Don -
I pulled together some data on where all this search innovation was happening and thought you might be interested. There's a surprising amount of activity in places you wouldn't expect.
http://www.libraryhouse.net/blog/2007/03/02/search-engines-emerge-from-googles-shadow/?=d
Posted by: Scott Eblen | March 02, 2007 at 06:17 AM
Don, awesome finding you surfacing ... of maybe I am after all these years. That's a great list; love the mashup. It feels like 1998 all over again :-), kind of Altavista-like 72 hours before the IPO gets canceled!
Seriously, which ones are from NY?
-arnaud
Search is the Internet OS!
Posted by: Arnaud Fischer | March 04, 2007 at 01:09 PM
Let me suggest one more great metasearch!!
Xooda - The Smart Metasearch
http://www.xooda.com
It covers upto 16 major search engines and provide the most localized results.
It is helpful to users from different country to find the most relevent things.
You must love it!
Have a try!
Posted by: mazzleyu | March 05, 2007 at 01:00 AM
Great list Don, thanks for posting.
Just a couple of notes... Surfwax appears to be metasearch, not tech. Swoogle goes to some kind of lingerie site, not a search engine as far as I can tell. :-)
Posted by: Rich Skrenta | March 06, 2007 at 11:39 PM
Echoing Rich Skrenta's note: Swoogle.com leads to "Sexy WOmen's Online Gallery of Lingerie, Etc."
Perhaps you want the Swoogle associated with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County?
http://swoogle.umbc.edu/
Posted by: r!chard | March 07, 2007 at 06:16 PM
Thanks to Rich and Richard for finding the Swoogle bug. I have fixed the link to go to the correct Swoogle site.
Posted by: Don Dodge | March 07, 2007 at 07:11 PM
Great list, 10x Don!
Posted by: oggin | August 07, 2007 at 11:05 AM
Don,
Our search engine polymeta.com is not just a meta search, we are doing clustering so it falls into to cluster searh category. Thanks!
Posted by: Endre Jofoldi | August 13, 2007 at 03:01 AM
There is a new search engine coming on line based on the String Logic search tool. Considering the effeteness of String Logic it will be the most powerful engine to-date. Google seems to be deteriorating daily and Im (strange as it may seem) using Yahoo more and more. There are only 3 real engines out there that have the proper operators that allow direct searching, AltaVista, Yahoo and a distant 3rd google. Google was in first place for years but has dropped off considerably in the last 2 years. Picking an engine based on its ability to field location or concept is silly as this article seem to imply.
Posted by: Cindy Nguyen | January 13, 2008 at 03:48 PM