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The reason everyone still uses Google isn't because they have the best ranking of results anymore, which is usually encrusted with spam sites designed to beat Google, but because they have the most COMPLETE results. When you search for something rare, Google most likely will return results no other basic engine has. So people have gotten accustomed to checking Google first out of habit more than anything else.

To me, I think the future of search isn't necessarily a better Google, but something different. The problem with Google is the same as its strength - its simplicity. There is very little control on Google for more complicated searches, such as searching only company websites, or searching only encyclopedia content. It's just a big kludge for them to add stuff like travel info or weather or movie info without knowing the intent of the searcher beforehand. Searchers have to get savvier, not just the algorithms. I think search aggregating sites like Seaurch.com which has 200 engines but still uses a simple interface, is a great idea. Sites like Clusty.com also take an interesting approach towards understanding the searcher's intentions.

The search-engine battle is not over yet.

The ad running with the Ask.com founder made me roll my eyes, hearing that they were the only ones using clustered results. I use Clusty.com if I want clustered results (and have since it was Vivisimo), and see no reason to switch. They should stick to natural language querying as their niche - other search engines have clusters covered.

Oops ... fixed link: http://clusty.com.

what used to be called 'data-mining' in 80 and 90s is now machine learning in 21st century.. and there are several instances where machine learning has shown tremendous success (probably this is the only by-product of AI that has shown promising real world applications)

I havent RTFA but I think "RDBMS-view" is too naive for given scale of problem. What one has to understand is that data-mining is not a "push-button" technology, one has to have a total understanding of data and 'interesting questions' that one wants to answer then choose right set of algorithms and tune them properly. In biomedicine, there has always been 'bio-statisticians' in the hospital who perform these tasks.

How are the results of this algorithm any different than the results of search engines like clusty?

have any of you tried http://clusty.com/. While people are suggesting, criticizing and all the rest, I suggest giving it a look. I thought was much more unique than Accoona and actually quite useful, though not Google (of course).

Still waiting on the answer. Guess I'll have to try Clusty.

In the begining there was http://web.archive.org/web/19960511013133/http://w ww.altavista.digital.com/ .. :) .. The first GOD of Search Engines. Eventually all Gods die, and of course Google will too. I am allready looking for alternatives. One that seems as a potential sucessor is clusty.com.

Cheers...

Or you could try Teoma (owned by Ask), Exalead (an up and comming French search engine with a number of cool features), GigaBlast (a suprisingly good search built pretty much by one man!) or Wisenut (a search engine owned by Looksmart).

Another good idea is to use one of the Meta search engines. Personally I think Clusty (created by Vivismo) is the best and from your persective has the advantage of not using Google data. Otherwise many people swear by Dogpile (you can switch off Google as a source for results).

Also, many people forget about directories like ODP, which for certain subjects and topics work better than search engines. And whilst on the subject of internet community created resources, more often than not I find the answers I need on good old Wikipedia.

You know it is funny, for a website obsessed with alternative Operating Systems and browsers we don't hear much about alternative ways of finding information. It seems like many people here think the web would impload if Google disappeared. Yeah they are cool and have had some nifty ideas but it is actually suprisingly easy to get by without them.

Saw this in a few press-releases, and it seems to work pretty well.

http://ben.clusty.com/

Has a neat timeline of his accomplishments and has resources for teachers and students.

Clusty is based on the Vivisimo Velocity engine

I haven't been using Google for a few months now, there are valid alternatives.

Let's not forget Clusty. I already use them a lot for relatively basic searches. Maybe I'll be using them even more now.

Clusty

Being a Dead White Males is a growth industry.

Providing easy one-click access since 2005.

The obvious answer would be to quit using Google and try a search engine that actually delivers some relatively relevant results, pre-sorted and "clustered" results too. Might I be so bold as to suggest, insist even, that all y'all go to " http://clusty.com/ " and give a really great little search engine a try? Once one becomes accustomed to a decent search engine, Google tends to lose its charm rather quickly. Google is a fine hutch full of services, search just ain't one of the better, let alone good, ones.

Then again, there's always " http://turbo10/ "

Try Scroogle. http://www.scroogle.org/ Why? http://www.scroogle.org/gscrape.html Alternately, use Clusty, a metasearch http://www.clusty.com/ Clusty even has a plugin for your Mozilla/Firefox search box http://clusty.com/toolbar/mozilla

Try Scroogle. http://www.scroogle.org/ Why? http://www.scroogle.org/gscrape.html Alternately, use Clusty, a metasearch http://www.clusty.com/ Clusty even has a plugin for your Mozilla/Firefox search box http://clusty.com/toolbar/mozilla

Others I can't live without: Gmail notifier, Diggler (as in konqueror you can clean the address bar with one click), Launchy (integrate with your email client), Google toolbar (spellcheck!), Duplicate tab (make the back button work your new tabs), Single window, Aardvark (clean a page before printing it), Session saver (keep your work even with an always crashing browser full of extensions).

Web developers can't miss: live http headers, Venkman, Web Developer.

Even if the search engine knows that I want Apple Macintosh (the computer), Google still doesn't know if I want pages that describe hardware, software, peripherals, the company's site, old 68k Macintoshes, new machines, stuff for sale, fan sites, technical support, etc. Yes, I can add more search terms, but adding terms has two great problems. First, added terms often end up throwing away the very pages that I seek if the page doesn't contain the words I use (e.g., a search on Apple Macintosh misses all the sites that just call the computer "Mac"). Second, I may not even know what terms to use or how to spell them, but like pornography I'll know good search hits when I see them.

What would help is some interactive process that directly asks or deduces whether the search hits are on target or not. The second page of hits would differ depending on how the searcher interacts with the first page -- giving the user more or fewer of pages similar to those they liked or didn't like respectively.

Search should be more like a game of "hot-n-cold" in which the searcher can easily tell the search engine which hits are "warmer" (more on target) or "cooler" (less on target).

With the GUI modes in Linux the interface can be very graphical and not that hard for someone to learn. An older friend of mine who doesn't own a PC used some PC with older Windows software and had an easier time learning Solaris to do a new job and like several other people were she works the switch to Windows made several tasks harder to do. During the newer training to Windows she had several questions of "with UNIX we can do ... to fix a customers problem how do we do it with Windows" and the trainer gave it can't be done or I don't know quite a few times. A few years later when they had a strike I asked her if the managers had to try and use Windows to complete the tasks and she said was suprized I remembered what she said earlier and said "No, they pulled out some UNIX boxes and they used them".

Note every major OS upgrade requires learning new skills, and with Windows Office software compatiblity to older versions stops after a few upgrade versions. He stated that he needed support that would work with older features, OpenOffice.org has people who continually work on improving some of the backward compatiable conversion. I have found OpenOffice to work good when I owned Office97 and went to a school that used Office2000 and possibly some newer versions in some labs I used, it had some quirks in the earlier versions but now does an excellent job compared to MS Office between different versions 97 and 2000 on different OS's Windows 98, and newer versions like NT, 2000,.... When my motherboard had a proprietary part die and I found out the OEM copy of Windows 98 would no longer install since I upgraded my hard drive and gave the old one away, I had to switch to my Linux box and StarOffice /OpenOffice (buying it StarOffice was cheaper than new OS/motherboard). I played with StarOffice when it was a free Beta and wish they would bring back the calendaring software, but with Evolution on Linux it doesn't matter. Not everyone gets a raise every year and for further training sometimes you don't make as much as before. Also note he was getting tired of the upgrades that sometimes gave him less of the features he had before or broke other things.

Note support for most operating systems can to done by Googling for the right solution. I like Clusty http://clusty.com/ because the subgroup the general terms into smaller groups automatically and yes they have a toolbar for your browser. Learning is good and the backup of files is a good practice everyone should be doing (should be done for every major software upgrade). Note like my switch from Windows 3.1 to 95 being able to switch back because things don't work is a good thing just in case. Windows/hard drive didn't like switching between OS's a dozen times and Linux found my Dell monitor better than Windows 95. I had to disable the monitor and on the second try windows finally worked, tech support didn't give any help. Use Clusty to find the answers and pick the cluster on the left to narrow selection to the right answer.

Meh... it's a step in the right direction. Clusty is more or less my backup search engine when I can't trick Google into giving me what I want.

Maybe the poster was looking for something like that.

It really depends on what your searching for as to what the best search engine is. There is so many broken and b.s. links in the google search engine that its almost impossible to claim that google is as good as it was 6-18months ago. There are so many other search engines that are gaining momentum with real innovation. Many people have been very impressed with the way that http://clusty.com/ has been growing. some of the categorisation within the search engine is brilliant. MSN has beaten google to the search engine crown with the ability to search based on a meaning of the word (obviously there are words that have two different meanings and the search differs based on the result).

I am not a fan of MS in any way shape or form. At the end of the day I use linux because I dont have to worry about Windows Genuine Advantages and Service Packs that block keys or anything piracy centric. Its a real liberty to rid yourself of the clutter and dependance on any one particular vendor.

As soon as people realise that they have a choice the trends in the market will change. One of the biggest points is about comfort. People are comfortable with windows they will stick with it even if its a bad thing for the market.

Think about this.. I have spent a long amount of time in china travelling and working. In that time I dont think I saw one legit install of Windows running in the majority of places. So what I say.. Most of the people are earning less than a copy of Windows costs so thats the way life will be. But many of those systems are becoming more and more out of date and unpatched. What MS has done to try and protect profits is at the detrement to the entire internet.

I like http://www.clusty.com/. This meta search engine clusters results according to relevancy.

So true...all of the cool innovations in search have been coming from non google companies. Yes Google is doing all sorts of crazy shit with maps and photos and ajax...but the search is the same as ever, and Yahoo and MSN search is about equal in quality now. But where are the search innovations? Clusty has awesomely useful clustered search, Yahoo came up with that search that lets you adjust the search to find more research or more ecommerce...Yahoo demoed that social linking search engine... I mean, where is Google when it comes to the Search innovation? I hope they havn't forgotten that supposedly there goal was to be about search and only search.... It's frustrating that I still have to type a complex series of search commands into Google to get what I want.

Although it's been extensively hyped in the "Google killer" topics, I still find Vivisimo to be extremely useful. I don't use it for my main search, but if Google is too broad, off to Vivisimo I go.

Compare Google's results for 'world cup 2006' with the results from Vivisimo / Clusty.

I think that slashdot will fall over for a while too. I mean, look at all of the Google articles that get posted here. Every time someone burps about the "Summer of Code" Slashdot posts another article about it.

As for other search engines, you're right.. a cool one has sprung up.. Clusty - rather innovative, imho.

I think they could buy Clusty from Vivisimo. The clustered search is real handy and it's something I haven't seen Google do yet.

Google really lacks at filtering out noise. I was looking for Gran Turismo tuning stuff yesterday. Gran Turismo tuning -"release date" -cheats -faq, &c &c &c. The list of restrictions to filter out noise kept getting bigger and bigger, but it was still just the big agencies that were getting hits, nothing about the game itself.

Clusty on the other hand is no sucker for a press release. I find its much smarter at locating actual content.

Myren

There are many more interesting distinctions than a simple dichotomy between commercial/noncommercial--why not list them directly?

Have a look at Clusty as one example of a search engine that categorizes your search results along more dimensions, yet seems at least as intuitive and usable as the new Yahoo! interface.

Yahoo!'s interface seems unnecessarily simplistic to me.

Thats one of the most accurate things i've heard in a long time...when it comes to search, unless Google has something big they arn't showing us, they are really falling behind the curve. Combine Clusty with this yahoo tool, and I would never even think about using Google again, which allows absolutely no drilling down. Using a complex algorithm of search terms to find exactly what you want is so 1998.

Why not? It happened to Alta Vista, Lycos, AOL and to some extent Yahoo. Do you really think there will be nothing to top Google ever? Personally I already think that Clusty provides a more useful search.

Agreed they offer some cool stuff for free, but i think they are doing the exact same thing yahoo did which was stop caring about search and spending IPO money on all kinds of other crazy fun things. So yeah, yahoo is a great one stop place to get stock quotes, sports scores etc, but the search went downhill. Same thing with Google...i think they are already behind on the search curve because of new types of searches like Clusty that are much more useful then their current search engine.

Agreed, they are all over the place...trying to do everything. I still don't think their search is as good as it could be (See Clusty for a useful new type of search). They seem to be more like a bunch of intellectual kids who won the lottery and want to spend all their time coming up with neat ideas instead of actually worrying about giving returns to the shareholders who bankrolled them. I'm sure that's what alot of you all like about them so much, but if it fails it will ruin future companies that want to be ran like this.

Some URLs for those who don't know yet:

Yahoo Search!
Clusty
MSN Search

Check them out when/if having problems with Google. Second one looks especially interesting. Third one is the best for warez and stuff (amazingly).

Now if we've had an alternative to groups.google.com...

Google brings up both Pfizer first and the FDA and Wikipedia pages on the first page. The ideal search engine would automatically bring in some results from a search for "Sildenafil citrate" as well and some generic manufacturers site. Clusty does better than Google on searches like this (i.e. alternative keywords that might be worth trying, or if you are likely to ahve to narrow the search).

If I'm not sure where to start, I use http://www.clusty.com/ to find pertinent search terms. Then its off to google.

I just wish I knew how to change the "I'm feeling lucky" button so it would enable/disable sites with shopping carts in the results.

Firefox people?!?!?!!

Bad name, good search results:

Clusty, aka, Vivisimo: http://clusty.com/

This one has succeeded when Google has failed.

Use vivisimo instead of clusty. It is the same search engine/company, just different names. If you search use Vivisimo, the sponsored links aren't quite as obnoxious. Unfortunately, the firefox extension uses Clusty, not Vivisimo.

As for the names, both of the suck big-time. "Vivisimo" and "Clusty". Geez. I remember a few years ago, Price Waterhouse Coopers Consulting decided to change their name to "Monday". I wonder if the folks at Vivisimo hired anyone from PWCC, because their names suck almost as much.

Asides from the horrible name, clusty (a clustering search engine) is very innovative and easy to use. I hope more search engines will adapt similar technology soon.

Link to clusty.com search engine

Clusty has a special search just for slashdot. I have been using it: http://slashdot.clusty.com/

Check this out http://www.google.com/firefox

It's nice, but it would be far more interesting if working from that page gave you a nice XUL interface to your search results. Maybe they could do clustering like http://www.clusty.com/ except have the drillable clusters in proper tree widgets, and a preview pane showing the google cache of the site and... well, there's plenty they could do if they got serious about using XUL. Until that happens it's just bothering to be nice to the browsers out there - they have asimilar page for IE, although to be fair mozilla, safari and opera don't have any such thing.

Jedidiah.

I would of liked to see a comparisation against the clusty search engine with those other search engines. I've found clusty to be very usefull with it's categorial search.

Although their "sponsored results" (taken from overture) tend to anoy me, as they look part of the search results.

You should try this search in Clusty, the clustering engine, from Vivisimo.

Try Clusty for clustered searching. I am starting to use it more often than google.

http://clusty.com/ !

That's why engines showing clustered results may well end up beating Google at its own game.