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Objectively Comparing Competing Search Engines?
aendeuryu asks: "My default search engine of choice is, like most of you I assume, Google. That said, some complaints about Google over the years do seem to have some merit -- basically, that sometimes the indices aren't always updated, that it's too easy to manipulate via googlebombing or legislation, and that maybe too many of its featured services never get out of beta stage. Maybe the fact that Google has gone so long without significant competition is enough to make one at least begin to ask questions about it possibly becoming stagnant. Personally, I'm so used to doing things the Google way (and achieving acceptable results quickly) that I'm not really interested in switching -- case in point, all the above links referenced were quickly found via Google. However, what am I missing out on by not giving (for example) Yahoo search a shot? Or, more to the point, how would one go about trying to effectively and objectively compare competing search engines? In what areas have people found Google to have become obsolete for their purposes? Have less ignorant people than myself figured out ways to test a competing search engine's efficacy for themselves?"
If you know how to use google to achieve your results, whats the issue? If a better search comes along, im sure it will be posted on slashdot (twice), so you dont need to worry about missing out.
"Something's wrong with you...and I hope we never do meet again." - Deftones When Girls Telephone Boys
personally I prefer dogpile. I like the organization of results much better.
""I don't see an obvious biosynthetic pathway from allicin (CH2=CHCH2SS(=O)CH2CH=CH2)to isothiocyanates (R-N=C=S) ""
Yahoo search is okay, not as nice as google, but a good second.
Alltheweb.com has found things google hasn't, but in general I rarely use it.
I rarely use MSN because it was awful all the times I tried it. Same for Altavista.
In general, if I'm searching for something I'll use google first and then Yahoo and Alltheweb to catch anything that google may have missed.
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
...but I have to admit the AltaVista search engine for pictures is pretty nice. I use that when I want to search for pictures of a particular size for wallpaper.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
You lazy fuckstick.
Go to google, try it, go to msn, try it, go to yahoo, try it, go to teoma, try it, go to Ask Jeeves, try it.
It's called DOING YOUR OWN FUCKING WORK, and it's the latest craze outside of the US.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Personally I would like to see an edition of google to allows for questions, similar to an ask jeeves.
Now sure enough Google has its faults, but I do still use it as my primary search engine. I do dislike Google never-ending cookies, so I've blocked them, and my Google bookmark contains all my preferences. I've not really noticed any problems with Googles indices not being updates (except in the silly image search, and I don't really use that for any serious purposes). Having said that, I also do find Yahoo to be a very acceptable alternative. I should probably try it out more so as to see how they compare in greater detail.
Santa's suicide mission go!
I think you have said it already, Google is good for returning acceptable results quickly, but acceptability is something very subjective.
Even by comparing keyword search side by side, one can still consider a worse result better, but who's to judge except the user?
I kept using Yahoo until it's not giving me results that I think are good enough, then I switched to Google, and I'll keep using Google until it's not returning good enough result.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
Hello.
I have been browsing your internet site for several hours and am generally impressed with your coverage of IT related issues. However, when I saw an article on Google I just had to voice my opinion. I would just like to say how increadibly appalled I am with the Google internet search engine. My main concern with Google is how easy it makes for malicious people to find information on the now illegal Bittorent computer software.
Some background information on Bittorent and what makes it so dangerous:
1. The Bittorent computer software allows distribution copyrighted material.
2. In doing so it inadvertently causes excessive use of bandwidth. Now you might say that this is fairly harmless, but is it really? The effects of electromagnetic radiation pollution caused by this cannot be underestimated. Just think of the millions of wired and wireless connections lighting up and emmiting those deadly electromagnetic rays and all the innocent men, women and children being exposed to them.
Every bittorent user has blood on his (or hers) hands. From this point on, I am boycotting Google and advise any person with a shred of decency to do so too.
Personally, I'm so used to doing things the Google way (and achieving acceptable results quickly) that I'm not really interested in switching -- case in point, all the above links referenced were quickly found via Google. However, what am I missing out on by not giving (for example) Yahoo search a shot?
I ask my wife the same thing. Honey, I'm used to doing things your way.. and I always get acceptable results from you.. but what am I missing out on by not giving (for example) Veronica a shot?
At least Google will never make you sleep on the couch, or give them half of all your assets. Hopefully.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
I open my browser, and see the Google page up and running. I started with Yahoo, I tried meta search engines, altavista, a9, and many others, but I never change my home page to be the other ones. I know Google, I know how to use the results and to view pages all in HTML and to get the cache and to search sites that link to me, or search a specific site. It's easy in the other sites, but I already figured Google out. Google works for me, when I find the wrong thing, I just add "-wrongword" to the end and I find what I need. I see all the blogs and misindexed pages, but I've never really suffered from Google Bombing or any of the other problems that are mentioned.
Make your computer faster: rm -rf
Alternative search engines
-- Knowing too much can get you killed, but knowing who knows too much can make you rich.
Go to google and type in "better search engines"
God Bless America. Why? Did it sneeze?
is that if you can't find what you're looking for with one engine, try another. I don't see what's so hard about that. Any synthetic benchmark will be just that. It's not like you have to change your voter registration to another party in order to vote in a primary -- you put in another URL!
To help you out, I'll even get you started with a few clickable links...
Yahoo Search
MSN Search
Ask Jeeves
Hope that helps. Good luck.
500GB of disk, 5TB of transfer, $5.95/mo
SafeSearch is off... excellent for that random naked celeb sighting!
This should give you an answer
If I am looking for adverts, or to buy something, I will use Yahoo. It's classified ads sections are much better than anything Google can offer.
If I am looking to buy something offline, I use yell.com.
If I am looking for software, I use something like freshmeat or one of the rpm search facilities.
Otherwise, I use Google.
When I am not getting satisfactory results using Google(about 30% of the time), I try Yahoo, and I usually find what I am looking for. If this keeps up, I might start my searches using Yahoo.
University of Washington
Student
I started using google because of one thing: it was fast. All the other engines I tried back in my days were so frustratingly slow and google paved the way for quick results. Now we dont say im going to 'search for $whatever', it's the norm to exclaim that you're going to google $whatever other search engines are too full of shit for my liking. I look forward to that friendly minimalistic google search form.
Unfortunately, comparing search engines is a nearly impossible task, since they probably aren't indexing the same data.
When you measure a search technology, the values you typically look for are precision and recall. precision says "of the X results you gave me, how many of them are relevant". recall says "in the world, there were Y possible pages you could have found, but you gave me X of them".
you can't measure recall for a public search engine, but you can measure precision. Take a set of sample queries, and some users. Have them perform the queries, and go through the first ~100 pages and give them a "thumbs up" (relevant) or "thumbs down" (not relevant).
Your overall score will measure precision: if at N=100, all 100 were relevant, that's 1.0. if only 50 were judged relevant, precision is 0.5.
You can estimate recall by judging say 1,000 documents (phew). Then sample precision at N=10, 100, 500, etc, assuming that is an "exhaustive" list of documents in the world.
Try a metasearch and let the server figure it out.
there are search engines other than google?....interesting
is the summary this?
.. indeed. Try and compare. let us know the results. Until then .. slashdot frontpage? I am confused.
Google might be getting complacent. Why not try something else ?
Umm.. why not
If you wanted to test them oen way would be to do a identical search on severl search engines and then compare the totla number of relavant matches you get from each. This would be a effective if time consuming method. The only other search engine I've seen that comes close to google is alltheweb.com which is most notable for being a smaller clone of google.
Funny that an article about an objective comparison of search engines has the Google logo...
Teoma has this great feature called Related search which is very useful. Basically if you look for a particular topic, the search engine identifies all related topics and offers you a one click access to all of them. Makes the search equally usable for both a rookie and a domain expert using the same search term.
One thing I like about askjeeves and a9.com is the way the present the search results. I think the next step is to improve on the presentation of the results (data) to make it more usable/accessable. Hit up askjeeves and run a search. The preview feature is pretty nice. And check out a9.com searches with their Site Info mouse-over.
I hate to say it, but I think your quest to directly compare search engines "objectively" is pretty problematic.
Frankly, I think you're on the right track when you ask, "What am I missing out on by not giving Yahoo search a shot?"
Likewise, I think you're on the wrong track when you go on, "Or, more to the point, how would one go about trying to effectively and objectively compare competing search engines?"
Comparing the results of searches is necessarily subjective. Only that first question has a real answer.
RD
These types of issues are discussed ad infinitum at SEW.. particularly in the forums.
This is the dilemma for any centralized algorithm, as soon as you are number one you are exploited, thus relatively increasing the utility of as-of-yet unexploited competitors.
Google did a good detailed (though biased) comparison. link: http://www.google.com/u%72%6c%3f%71%3d%68%74tp:%2f %2fl%65mo%6ep%61r%74y.%6f%72g%26.html
http://www.gay-sex-access.com/
I got this from a friend who works at yahoo...
m l
http://www.langreiter.com/exec/yahoo-vs-google.ht
Sorry if it gets slashdotted.
I have posted here before a test I conducted when MSN rolled out their new search engine.
I was working on an MS Access project and had a lot of questions. I figured if any one would have the answers it would be MSN.
They didn't.
I went to Google, not much more help -- too much experts exchange links.
I also tried the same searches on Yahoo and they were head and shoulders above the other two.
Google? Slashdot? Objectively? You're new here, no?
You don't have to bother evaluating better web based technologies. When they are worth using others will tell you about them. It's the nature of the web.
For example, a professor of the university department in which I worked came back from Digital Research Labs, enthusing about a great new search algorithm the designers of Digital's Computer Aided Design software had come up with. A short time later Altavista was 'it'.
The same happened a few years later. The buzz from collegues and those on the web was about a new search engine called Google.
The short answer is, "Don't go looking for the 'next search engine'. It will find you."
I love wikipedia. I basically use it as my default search. Unless I think that the question I have is non encyclopedic. acronymfinder for acronyms, babelfish for translations, imdb for movies, and well, for everything else I use google. It has integrated everything else I need. Yes it is subjectable to googlebombing and similar ilk (I should know, I work for a SEO company), but its *way* easier to "hack" Yahoo, MSN, Altavista and others. Googleboming is much harder (and therefore more reliable) than the others.
Yes, it's really that simple. We need a few big, strong, non-Microsoft companies out there keeping Microsoft from becoming even more all-encompassing. It is good to back non-Microsoft technologies whenever we can. It's best to back totally open technologies, but non-evil corporations like Google are a good second choice.
Remember this -- never forget this -- once Microsoft takes monopo-ownership of something, it's nearly impossible for anyone to take it away from them. Google's strong lead in search (and increasingly in other Internet services as well) helps to keep things at least a little balanced. Imagine a future in which Microsoft owns search and webmail as well? Sooner or later everything would be IE-only, and eventually Windows-only, and Microsoft will have completed its goal of effectively taking ownership of the Internet.
A good policy to go with is to simply always go with the strongest non-Microsoft choice available when choosing any product or service.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
I _used_ to go to altavista everytime i had a search that involved specific punctuation, usually some kind of coding question. Now i just get frustrated with google while trying to find some related term i can add in that will give me the results i want.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
I've given a lot of thought to this because Google has recently not given me the results I wanted. Yahoo has. I think a lot of it has to do with Page Ranking.
Page ranking has been called the democratic way of building an index. However, it's more like thinking that because Terri Schiavo is all they talk about on the news, it's the most relevant news topic to you. The truth of the matter is, # of links != relevance in all cases. Most Slashdotters must have a lot of experience with this when searching for obscure coding problems.
Yahoo now excels at answering those while Google does not. MSN has room to improve, and they must be trying, considering their robot crawls my sites about 10 times a day.
I use Clusty.com for most searches, and google when the clustering does not give me what i need.
Or perhaps Baaaaaahhhhhhh. In short, try it all. I remember the days when AltaVista was THE search engine to use, now I think about it in rare cases. Admittedly, there's always something "bigger and better" out there, so try out the bigger and better to see if it really is. After all, this is technology we're talking about. Or did I stumble into the Redneck 4x4 web site again? I need another beer....
I think the only reasonable criterea for judging a search engine is how well its name works as a substitue for the verb "search". I think you're simply going to have to continue to google it.
I don't mind items being left in beta for long periods of time. What I would mind is a product being fully released with many unfixed bugs as in the case with some other familiar companies.
Every once in a while I do venture to other search engines and I am quickly turned off by clutter such as in Yahoo's case or a case of déjà vu as in the case of the MSN search.
Bottom line is despite the a appearance of "beta" in a logo in some products or availability of viable competitors I will switch for the same reason I originally went to Google, when I find something that is sets a new benchmark in my online experience. I don't need more of the same.
While most of the complaints about Google are warranted, Google works well enough even for those of us in the computer industry. If 99% of the time I find what I'm looking for in the first page of links, and the results are returned quickly enough, why would I go elsewhere?
Yahoo and Altavista worked ok for me before Google came along, but the clean interface and good results drew me in. So, the only thing that would convince me to switch to a different search engine would be if Google started cluttering up their pages (a la Yahoo) or the results became unusable.
If I'm looking for specific information that Google might not happen to have, I will check alltheweb.com, but that's a pretty rare occurance.
Finally, I don't see why people complain about Google's features being beta. They're still completely usable, and if you run across a shortcoming that really bothers you, there's plenty of alternatives for that service.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Indexing the www at the rate it grows is a tremendous task, and Google, through innovative technology and marketing, has brought a more productive Internet to most of the world. It is difficult to see it being done better, but, as recent articles pointed out, it is not difficult to manipulate those search results. The business of search ratings is large and growing. Customers of ISPs get large numbers of IP addresses from different blocks just so they can take advantage of its link score and sell this rating to customers, regardless of revence.
Do I use Google? F@#k, it's my homepage, but I long for the notion of "just great searching technology." Information warehouses like citeseer.com are fantastic. Let Google take the mainstream for quick fixes for the immediate gratification generation, but when you need truly credible sources and information you're staking your career, health, or financial well-being on DON'T let it rest solely in the hands of Larry and Sergey.
- Simple interface, quickly loads.
- No graphical Ads
- Paid results are clearly ads and seperated from real results.
That's it, that's why Google is king. Until Yahoo, MSN search, Ask Jeeves and the like get those three points, they will continue to be second fiddle.I usually test search engines by typing in popular keywords that spammers generally go after, ex:
phentermine
home loans
poker
mesothelioma
viagra
miserable failure
Then look at the sites that rank at the top. It's very easy to tell which search engines are more succeptible to manipulation. A quick look at the backlinks for sites favorably ranking in those competitive keywords tells you how that SE is doing.
Here's my opinion on the race between Google, Yahoo & MSN. Google has more sites that are authorities in the top results and Google penalizes over optimization however extreme examples of over optimization continue to show up in Google. Yahoo is a moderate success and does a fair job of filtering out spammy sites as well as authorities like wikipedia - wikipedia will always rise to the top in G but not in Y - and this is good for Y because you get more variety. MSN does an average job of filtering out blog spam but new sites are too favorably ranked and this is because MSN is new and has no recorded history of URLs. My personal preference is to use G simply because it loads the fastest in my browser... Maybe it's also worth pointing out that my company has several URLs ranked favorably in the terms listed above - looking at the change in rankings over time certainly helps give insight into which SE is better. MSN & Y are by far easier to manipulate than G but G gives the most traffic.
Many people don't realize that Yahoo! has a scaled down (Google like) search interface which is actually pretty sweet: http://search.yahoo.com
Lately my Google results have been so Google bombed that I've been going back and forth between the two. I can't say for sure yet, but I may be in the middle of a bit of a personal transition.
Depending on what you're searching for, Google is often so front-loaded with dead-end advertiser links that its results aren't really worth much. Although it has to be said, it depends what type of a search user you are, and what types of things you're looking for.
Google is still the king of advanced search.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
In the old days (that's a small number of months these days) the Googlebot would hit you and index you as soon as you set up a site and it was good, unless you weren't ready for it. Recently I've set up a new site for a client and Yahoo was first off the blocks, then MSN, Google came along a struggling third a week later. Shockingly MSN pulls my Slashdot comments _the_same_day_ I write them! Let alone any of my sites! Google get them much later. Google is king of content, but its quickly loosing its lead in recentcy. If it lists a news article a week after it was new, that's not news... I fear Google may be loosing out due to the size of data it has, an for that I lament for Google was and is the best, and the cleanest, but if it can't keep it data fresh as the other engines it will surely loose users?
What I hate is googling for something and:
1. getting 5000 hits that are all crap websites linking to Amazon.com's page for the item
2. Getting 2500 hits that have NOTHING to do with my search term. The term isn't even on the page. These must be those re-direct things talked about on Slashdot earlier.
3. Getting 2 hits of interest by ploughing (yes Yanks, that's spelled properly) through 14 pages of crap. This is what search used to be like before Google Original came in.
One hint I have to share is instead of searching "foo review" search for "foo problems" or "foo heavy" etc. or some other relevant critical (and thus less likely to be used in a shill site) term which tends to turn up real hits.
I still use Google by default but find more and more that I try other web searches like clusty or lycos to try and cut down on crap wading time.
Google may lead the way, may or may not provide the 'best' service ( whatever you consider best ) but it is not alone in the race.
You should check out every other player for they are all trying to offer something different or something more to differentiate or even outperform Google.
I suspect Google's best weapon is the power of habbit. Most people have switched to Google over the recent years and have learned to love it and really feel comfortable with it. This could be one of the many reasons Google is sticking to its simple interface; people are having a hard time getting familiar with something 'new'.
When Google entered the game, there was noone paying attention. Search was considered a somewhat dead service. It was easy for Google to get the king's crown. Things are way different now though. Yahoo!, MSN and the rest will have really hard time trying to catch up with Google - not that they are much worse or better than it is, for that matter.
Technology ramblings : Simple is Beautiful
Thank you for mentioning it; yes class, google is a good alternative search engine too.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
Of course, every other search engine appears to be a lot worse, as they conform to the "in locked file cabinet behind door with sign Beware of Leopard" rule of accessibility. If you can even find one that does not demand money for listing.
It used to be pretty easy to submit stuff.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
You could always Google for the comparison results.
Oh come on it's funny!
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I think the links are supposed to be "googlebombing" or "litigation", not "legislation".
Real search results... sort of...
If your name is somewhat rare, search on your name in the search engine.
Ben Hocking
Need a professional organizer?
I was looking through my website's logs and noticed a ton of MSN bot hits. Then I noticed one coming from their search page. The search term was "UTC+flash" and my site was listed third in the search results.
My site has nothing to do with UTC or Flash. Turns out, it indexed my lame little archive page that displays article dates in UTC format. One of the article titles was something like "Flash Storm," so it indexed the "UTC" portion of the previous article's date and the word "Flash" that began the next article's headline below it.
It was cool that I got a free hit for it, but my site was hardly a relevant search result for that query.
Google is great for finding web pages, but why limit your searches to such a broad domain? Vertical search seems to be where all of the innovation is occurring. My guess is in the future we'll have very specific search engines tightly integrated with their relevant platforms.
For example you could do your music searching on your iPod or stereo, your yellow pages searches on your mobile phone, your video searches on your pvr. Of course it makes sense to expose a web front end to these engines as well, but it seems to me that using the web browser as your information acquisition platform is somewhat limiting.
Looks like you are the lazy one. Don't go to Yahoo. Go to the source. Don't search on "tibet": only lazy idiots do that. You have go to Tibet yourself and find out. Do your own work, right?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Nothing screams objective like this article displaying the Google logo.
I work in the seo industry and it's far easier to manipulate yahoo and msn than google. This translates into better search results which is why I still use google for my searching. Having said that, google's results have degraded over time as seo's have gotten better at manipulating google. Unfortunately we live in a world that revolves around marketing and I don't see that changing any time soon.
I personally think Microsoft's sandbox search engine front-end is pretty nifty.
Too bad the search results aren't nearly as up to par as google's results (in my opinion)
http://start.com/1
WTPOUAWYHTTOTWPA
What's the point of using acronyms when you have to type out the whole phrase anyways?
I know how to use Windows to achieve the necessary results better than the Mac or Linux. Does that means I should never try to use the Mac or Linux? Does that mean that I won't achieve better results if I learn to properly use the Mac or Linux?
-Daniel
I've stuck with Google for a while, but I used to do surveys pretty often. My approach was to start preparing a couple of days in advance, by keeping notes about things I was searching for. Then I'd take three or four of them, usually the ones that I'd had the most trouble refining, and try them out on a bunch of search engines. For each, I'd keep track of how many searches I had to do and how many junk pages I had to get through before I could get to something useful on that subject. It usually became clear pretty quickly which search engines were allowing me to make efficient use of my time and which were wasting my time.
Another thing you might want to do is check out some of the newer "clustering" or "concept map" search engines such as Vivisimo or Kartoo, to see whether they suit your searching style better. They're really quite different from the search engines we've gotten used to, so the metrics I just described don't quite work for them. That doesn't mean they're better or worse - just different.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
He's "Asked Slashdot" to "compare objectively". He must be new around here.
I remember having to walk uphill in the snow both ways to the mailbox to mail my google queries in!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
I do a lot of searches that are not related to computers, science, or math.
I've found that, as far as it concerns these areas, Yahoo is vastly superior to the steaming pile of googlespam that is the competition.
When I search for something related to computers, though, I head right over to Google. Additionally, Google News is a nice feature.
The new google scholar is a GREAT idea, but in practice it doesnt work. All the real science is by subscription only.
This is a real problem for finding the details on a particular subject. Most online journals are biased towards biomedical sciences. There is no "real" access to journals outside of this. Biological abstracts and some other search engines are still pay by search only, and usually accessable via University library systems.
University libraries have to pay tons of money to subscribe to these online journals. Google can access the abstracts, but that only goes so far. Pub med is ok and better for finding some thigns, but it is a horrible search engine (they should just use the google engine on their database).
As for ther overall usefullness for finding real peer reviewed science on the web, it is still not available to most people.
Since I tend to have to do some SEO for sites, I tend to keep an eye on how search results are returned... one thing I've noticed is that Yahoo seems far more easily manipulated by URLs - ie, it seems to weight something like, "www.goats.com/goats" high for the term "goats" even when the site has little or nothing to do with goats.
Also, Yahoo and MSN both seem extremely poor about figuring out the "right" url to link to. It's almost as if they index the first thing on any domain they come across, instead of trying to figure out where on the site most people link to, so you'll often find yourself deep-linked into a site where you'd prefer to be looking at a higher-level page to start. Google deeplinks too, but it seems to be only when it's really more relevant to the content.
I don't use a9 much, but it seems like google with a different skin. I swear sometimes they're snarfing google's results and storing them. Not that this is all bad, since Google's results tend to be some of the best, but it's still eerie.
Apparently Ask Jeeves reccommends MSN search.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Some times I used astalavista.box.sk
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
I think the coolest thing here is to enter "search engine" so you can compare what they think of each other easily ;)
The algorithms the search engines use change consntatly, so Google might have better results one day, that could change to Yahoo and back in no time. I've found that I can find most anything in most any search engine if I use a long enough string of keywords, but outside of that there's an easy way to judge search engine quality, and that's how fresh their data is.
I recently moved a client from a small shopping site to a data-driven site with 40,000+ products. Google had 10k pages indexed inside of a month, whereas Yahoo, MSN and others were several times that. After a year, Google still eats up more bandwidth spidering the site than all other engines combined.
Algorithms change all the time, but you'll never find it in X search engine if they haven't seen the content.
"hard work often pays off over time, but laziness always pays off now."
I have found that answers.com is a quite good alternative to Google at times when I *know* what I'm looking for. It may be I want a definition of a word, want to know when a certain historic event happened, want a translation or similar.
:)
It also has quick links to Google, Google images, Google news, Technorati if I want to find a blog and Amazon if I want to find a product. All in all a very nice alternative, and I have quite grown to liking it a lot (and hence using it a lot too.
See this for an overview of open access to academic journals.
Google blah blah blah. Linux blah blah blah. Google blah blah blah? Blah Blah [wikipedia.org] Blah. Blah? Google Blah? Blah?
This story came from "oogling-others-against-google dept." WTF? Is there seriously nothing interesting out there anymore? What happened to all the geeks and nerds who build or run into cool stuff and talk about their experience?
good sir, what is efficacy??
"..too many of its featured services never get out of beta stage"
Who cares? Froogle and Google News (and for that matter, Gmail and Google Maps) are functional, and can be used today. Why would you let the word "beta" get in your way? Is there an unfulfilled promise?
ya know, cuz it's cool, and all. Really?, you can sell me that brige for 1/2 price? SWEET!
(If at first you don't succeed, do it different next time!)
I am able to find a plethora of porn very fast with google.... what else could anyone need?
Anybody else wonder about Yahoo! and their trustworthiness? Their invasive toolbar practially qualifies as adware, plus that new button showed up in Adobe Acrobat 7. SBC-Yahoo! DSL is a monstrous install as well. If Google stays away from those types of manipulations, I'm happy to have them as the status quo. -- Lax
MSN Search is now quite good, and it seems to re-index pages more frequently than Google. I use it for my number two search engine, especially if Google is returning incorrect or frustrating results.
Actually, I find scholar google very useful, a lot of the links admittedly aren't available to the public, but when I search logged in on a university computer, it seems many sites give me access as "Logged in X University"
i wrote some benchmarks of the three major search engines (downloadable here: asn1.tar.gz). Basically google had the fastest results, the most results, and tied with yahoo for the best quality results (actual usefulness of what was returned).
- tristan
Surprisingly, I still use Ask Jeeves (www.ask.com) for things - and find it finds things that Google has completely missed!
I guess you have to use a combination of several to really find everything you want - though Google by far is the best one.I've found that Yahoo`s Image Search is a lot more accurate than Google's. But I do like Google, so once they update their code some Ill go back.
Whether the first link is what you were looking for is purely a subjective matter. You can't objectively compare search engines when all of the data is subjective based on the user.
You can pick 200 terms, and figure out which engine brings the info you "really want" closest to the top in the most consistent manner. However, what "you really want" might not be what "I really want", so it's still a subjective result.
*sigh*
Is my knowledge of English failing me, or does this guy actually ask for what the opposite of what the title says? If it interests you what Google searching is lousy for, search for different kinds of things and see what is impossible to find with Google.
In any event, I find google practically useless for finding any kind of file other than html, pdf, doc, images, and a few others. Sounds, videos, archives, etc. are all pretty difficult for me to find with Google. Dedicated media searches like alltheweb or altavista (they're the same people now, right?) work better for these things.
You're asking about 'alternative's to Google on slashdot? That's like asking about alternatives to God in your local Church.
The difference between Google and Yahoo search is clear, at least in terms of how the result links are presented:
. tld/v=2/SI D=e/l=WS1/R=1/IPC=us/SHE=0/H=1/NW=1/SIG=127v4fk96/ EXP=1112223233/*-http%3A//www.domain.tld/webpage.h tml
Google:
www.domain.tld/webpage.html
Yahoo:
http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=domain
Why does Yahoo search need to register your EVERY click on the result links???
I feel the same way about the mp3 format. As everyone continues in their ways, they get used to google and how to use it and that if a search result is not included, they'll never miss it. Well, what about all the information that is lost on lossy fomats like jpeg, mpeg and mp3? Everyone likes the small file size and has decided that there is information that is disposable. However, there are people, such as myself, that CAN hear the difference between different media formats. Mp3 does a very good job of immitating CDs, but does not sound great. The jump from 44.1 to 48khz is magicial and beautiful. CDs sound clean and sterile. Well recorded full resolution DATs sound alive and have real depth, with out any need of 5-7.1 trickery.
So what I am saying is that just because Google is acceptable, it doesn't make it the best, even if we consider the missing information and acceptable loss. There is always a narrow (and expensive) market for those who need the best. At this time, I would be that the few information brokers still in business are that high end and they could give us a clue of all the information we are missing by our sole dependance of google for information. After all, google is an information service, not just web search. As such, I believe the objective measure isn't just web search, but the question to ask is what information is missing or insufficient?
Democrats and Republicans only disagree about how to enslave you
Looking through the logs for my website, I see Googlebot visiting nearly every day, followed (recently) by MSNBot. (Actually, in raw count, I'm seeing that MSNbot has just recently surpassed the number of requests as Googlebot. Would need to do some in-depth analysis to see if those are requests for the same thing over & over, but in raw requests...) I pretty much never see anything from Yahoo cataloging my site.
t ml#browsum, but Yahoo is giving more traffic (http://klomdark.servebeer.com:443/analog/report.h tml#refsite) than MSN.
What's weird I'm noticing is that I don't see anything from something like a Yahoo bot at http://klomdark.servebeer.com:443/analog/report.h
Google still leads however. I wonder where Yahoo is getting it's data, unless it's from a crawl previous to fall 2003, as I'm not tracking logs from that far back. Strange.
When I say "Google" may cat gives a full swish of the tail plus a half swish.
If I say "MSN" I just get a half swish.
I meantion "Yahoo" and she ignores me.
Maybe its the dog?
Gates says, "what does competing mean?"
Jobs says, "what do you mean, 'compare'?"
and the Slashdotter says, "Objectively?!?! You have to be new around here..."
(with apologies to Steve. Couldn't think of anything better)
The revolution will not be televised.
Because relivance is more complex. There's a number of additonal considerations:
1) HOW relivant is a page, and is that page more highly ranked? It doesn't do me any good to have 99 slightly relivant results and 1 highly relivant result, if that one is at the end. So you have to measure how relivant the page is, and how high it appears in teh search and weight that.
2) The ability to find the correct page. Sometimes it's not that you are looking for general inforamtion on a topic, there's a specific page you want. However you don't know the URL or how to get there. Maybe you saw it once and have a vague memory, maybe you just heard about it, whatever. In this case, it's a question of how quickly the engine gets you the correct answer, both in terms of how high it's ranked, and how many search variations you have to try.
3) Along those lines, the ability to deal with degraded input. Sometimes it's as simple as a spelling error, but sometimes it's the searcher misunderstanding their own question. They don't know precisely what they want. Maybe because they only have a vague idea, maybe because the term they remember for it isn't quite right, whatever. So how well can teh search engine figure out what they really want and find that?
So there's lots of things like that to consider as well when you are using a general purpose web search enigne. Really only personal experience can tell you if one works well for you at finding what you want.
include a link to google in the article? Who's gonna say "oh man, i've heard of this google thing but i just can't recall the url..."?
When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
I do use Google most of the time, but when a search-term just has to many meanings http://vivisimo.com/ has an interface that makes it a lot easier to find the right results quickly.
I've made many small websites and in my experience as of lately, I have found Google to be a difficult engine to predict ranking well in. I do not use black hat tactics but instead follow the rules: getting good links, titling pages correctly, clean html, and superior content.
But something is going on in google's engine that makes it extremely difficult to predict the ease of placement. And this is bad for everyone, not just webmasters. If you think Google is ahead and shoulders the superior search engine then you are probably not doing enough searches.
More and more categories are getting spammed up with "made for Adsense" sites that serve no purpose other than to serve ads and make revenue for the site owner and Google. Then of course their is the 301 pagejacking issue which is very real. And then there is the good old fashioned spam sites that have no business being in the results anywhere, but consistently make first page for popular searches.
But google has no motivation to change, not when Adsense revenues bring them billions and they are now a public company. As long as their brand name and the verb "google it" spreads, Google will no longer care about improving their algorithms and bringing the most relevent results to the searcher! There has not been a decent update in months now and the listings continue to stagnate slowly.
I still use G for half my searches now, but for the other half I use Yahoo, and get a completely different set of results. Sometimes Y is better, sometimes G. I just can't believe any self respecting geek would limit him/herself to one engine.
February's Scientific American had an article by Javed Mostafa entitled "Seeking Better Web Searches" in which they discussed not only the technology behind search engines, but also research theory and new technologies being developed for smarter or personalized search results. From this I learned of mooter.com and kartoo.com which use clustering to organize and display search results. Neither of these have the vast quantity of indices of google, but they are growing...
i can't think of a witty signature, so i won't try.
The feature I have been waiting for (and yes I realise it is open to abuse) is a human rating system.
... Google-gods, if you're listening ... pretty-please :0)>
... please let me know.
Click the thumb up and the pagerank for that page on those terms is [slightly] increased. Probably up to a maximum proportion, so that pages that otherwise rank very low can't be pushed to the top of the rank. (Of course you'd have some user verification, probably a registration system that allows only a limited number of votes - tied in with an image recognition test, or similar)
Click the thumb down and the pagerank is similarly decreased (or the page is added to a list for intensive testing by some robot with better 'spam' detection algorithms). Also,it would be nice if the search were then re-loaded excluding pages matching that domain (say). Thus the normal search refinement mechanism is used to improve the search results.
Perhaps two different thumbs-up would be needed, one for major index ("hub") pages and one for informational pages.
Has anyone tried this sort of system
pbhj
PS: I'm sure you just thought of a mojor flaw in this system
For some time now, Search Engine Watch has provided a good editorial and comparison on various search engines. They focus on marketing topics, but also tend to talk a lot about the underlying technology, etc.
A recent roundup of engines is at http://searchenginewatch.com/links/article.php/215 6221.
Google DOES NOT spider dynamicly created webpages. If you have, say for example, forums... it will spider only the first page. Yahoo, however, will spider the dynamic content [though with a limit to assure it doesn't get caught in a bot trap].
The Peanut Gallery, Ubergeek, Biblically Sober
NCAAbbs.com: Thousands of fans, Hundreds of teams, Just one place
In many cases....yes.
Ask and ye shall receive. Google voting exists on the latest toolbar. From google:
If you especially like or dislike a web page you're visiting and want to share your opinion with Google, you can vote thumbs up by clicking the happy face or thumbs down by clicking the unhappy face. These buttons can also be used to report especially useful or unsatisfactory results after searching with Google. Just click the appropriate button while you're still on the results page. This feature is currently in test mode, so you will not notice any immediate effects based on your action, other than experiencing a warm sense of satisfaction from having shared your feelings with people who really do care.
I can see this feature getting abused if it were to go live.
BB gave me several good locations to score some China White, but Google's beta Junkie Search performed remarkably well. Thanks again googlasdlghoaeu...
Risking karma for a little laugh.
Interesting point. Excluding blogs would actually be a pretty tight search option. I imagine I would use that every now and then.
Taking it a step further: Given the problem of blog spam, would it be realistic for engines to give searchers the option to exclude blogs from SE ranking criteria?
Maybe google can buy Metafor and tweak it so we can have natural language searches that work. Remember askjeeves.com? The best idea to come along in searching in a long time, but their results are worthless. In my experience Google gets the best results, but it can be a pain tweaking the query to get what your looking for.
Free MacMini
I'm so glad someone raised this. I was thinking just yesterday that the internet was *seeming* to have become smaller. The linking pagerank system google uses is strange IMHO because not all pages are massively linked.. or have reason to be linked.. it turns the net into some kind of boys club...
With that said, I have found that my more obscure and better quality sites have been found on the last pages of google, with the first few pages being generally filled with amazon and other *for sale* sites...
There are sites i've seen that have been around for years and don't even get a mention on google. Word of mouth was the only way I found out about them. I also remember how much the internet opened up when I first used the "stumble to" firefox extension. Who knew these sites even existed?!
I'd say the google solution would be so somehow incorporate a similar "word of mouth" type ranking system as "stumble to" (or slashdot for that matter), so individual users can rank results "useful/not useful" to modify page ranks... Also their "similar page" section would also benefit from a "useful/not useful" to help google learn similarities...
my 2c
'plex
Rich Gentlemen Hide - The Existential Comic
Google has access to way too much information. Seriously, you think with all those comp sci PhD they don't have an extraordinarily efficient massive long term database?
Personally, when I search for non mainstream content I tend to switch between a few different search engines. I don't like sending all my data through one channel.
No single search engine had won out so yo uhad a bank of search engines that you always scrolled through. What one engine didn't have another would.
Well a hell of a lot of those "old" search engines are still around! And they have become better over time. Google at one time was so much nicer than the others that people sort of got "lazy" and stopped browsing qround the engines. But everyone else didn't just curl up and die.
So just start engine hopping again. Try Google first if you must, but then try Yahoo, search.msn, alltheweb or search.com or other meta search engines that search all the real search engines for you.
Multiple sources of info have always been and always will be better than one giant conclomerate of info such as Google is becoming.
Contrary to popular belief, coding is not all free blow-jobs and beer. Those things cost MONEY!
Google has blocked most of the hackable websites found thru these searches, but yahoo still works fine. They don't have the same syntax, but it's still quite doable on other search engines.
And the winner is Yahoo.
You made me wonder... how come nobody came up with a pr0n search engine yet? It could be called Goatsearch, and maybe even get an address like Goatsear.ch (well, I don't think the Chinese govt would like that)... man, that sounds like instant success.
Here's a comparison of MSN Search and Google, done in excruciating detail: http://www.cse.buffalo.edu/~ajay/secompare.html
There are other search engines?
Absoulutely. Switch when windows no longer meets you needs, to do anything else is just stupid. I use linux becuase windows doesn't do what I need.
Can I be a Luddite too?
Here is an in-depth comparison. I searched for the Aboriginal Dreamtime, which I thought was as strange a topic as possible.
GOOGLE:
1. www.geocities.com/Athens/Atlantis/3425/page288.htm - #2 in yahoo, #1 in a9 - SEMI USEFUL
2. www.crystalinks.com/dreamtime.html - #1 in yahoo, #1 in msn - USEFUL
3. aboriginalart.com.au/culture/religion.html - - #7 in yahoo, #3 in a9 NOTHING NEW
4. www.aiatsis.gov.au/lbry/ fct_shts/annbib/annBib97/eMU_18.htm - #8 in a9 - USELESS
5. au.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_ 781530188/Dreaming_The.html - #6 in a9 - SEMI USEFUL
6. www.safaris.net.au/info/dreaming.htm - #5 in a9 - NOTHING NEW
7. projects.edtech.sandi.net/ dailard/oceanarts/Dreamtime.html - USEFUL
8. www.trinity.wa.edu.au/plduffyrc/aborigines/dream.h tm - #4 in a9 - JUST A LISTING
9. www.religioperennis.org/Document/Harry/MelodiesE.h tml - #7 in a9 - USEFUL
YAHOO:
1. www.crystalinks.com/dreamtime.html - #2 in google, #1 in msn - USEFUL
2. www.geocities.com/Athens/Atlantis/3425/page288.htm - #1 in google SEMI USEFUL
3. www.geocities.com/opossumsal/Aboriginal.html - wasn't in google or msn, #2 in a9 - NOTHING NEW
4. dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/.../Aboriginal_D reamtime - wasn't in google, #7 in msn - JUST A LISTING
5. www.gossamer-wings.com/soc/Notes/religion/tsld004. htm - wasn't in google, #9 in msn - NOTHING NEW
6. v8go.co.uk/.../geographical-religions/aboriginal-d reamtime.asp - wasn't in google - USELESS
7. aboriginalart.com.au/culture/religion.htm - #3 in google - NOTHING NEW
8. uni-duisburg.de/.../projekte/Maksymiuk/abori/Relig ion and Myths.htm - wasn't in google - USEFUL
9. uni-duisburg.de/FB3/.../Maksymiuk/abori/Religion and Myths Seite.htm - wasn't in google - USELESS
10. www.syberg.be/zMentalSpace/sSys/dreamsJ/06seriesJ/ J62e1.htm - wasn't in google - USELESS
MSN:
1. www.crystalinks.com/dreamtime.html - #2 in google, #1 in yahoo USEFUL
2. www.australianstamp.com/Coin-web/feature/history/a bdream.htm - wasn't in google or yahoo - USEFUL
3. www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0892814772/theorde rofthesel/ref%3Dnosim - wasn't in google or yahoo - USELESS
4. news.cous.biz/newspapers/ufglsndfg-aboriginal-drea mtime.html - wasn't in google or yahoo - JUST A LISTING
5. dogeatdogma.sed.ca - wasn't in google or yahoo - USELESS
6. australia.jrn.msu.edu/2002/work/aboriginal/Namarrg on.html - wasn't in google or yahoo - SEMI USEFUL
7. dir.yahoo.com/Society_and_Culture/Religion_and_Spi rituality/Faiths_and_Practices - wasn't in google, #4 in yahoo - JUST A LISTING
8. fs6.depauw.edu/~mkfinney/teaching/Com227/culturalP ortfolios/australia/trads.htm - wasn't in google or yahoo - USEFUL
9. www.gossamer-wings.com/soc/Notes/religion/tsld004. htm - #5 in yahoo - NOTHING NEW
a9:
1. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atlantis/3425/page 288.htm - #1 in google, #2 in yahoo - SEMI USEFUL
2. http://www.geocities.com/opossumsal/Aboriginal.htm l - #3 in yahoo - USEFUL (for a9 only)
3. http://aboriginalart.com.au/culture/religion.html - #3 in google, #7 in yahoo - USEFUL (a9 only)
4. http://www.trinity.wa.edu.au/plduffyrc/aborigines/ dream.htm - #8 in google - JUST A LISTING
5. http://www.safaris.net.au/info/dreaming.htm - #6 in google - NOTHING NEW
6. http://au.encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_781530188/D reaming_The.html - #5 in google - SEMI USEFUL
7. http://www.religioperennis.org/Document/Harry/Melo diesE.html - #9 in google - USEFUL
8. http://www.aiatsis.gov.au/lbry/fct_shts/annbib/ann Bib97/eMU_18.htm - #4 in google - USELESS
9. http://users.wpi.edu/~elisab/Dreamtime-final.doc - USELESS
Summ
I care about something far more than recall and precision. I care about rank. There are often 100s of pages on the topic I'm searching on. I do not have time or energy to wade through all of them. I want the first link that shows up to have all the information I need. This is more than relevance, this is ordered relevance.
Ah, but many things can meet your needs without being the BEST solution for them. For example, I COULD run everything through a text based interface - it would meet my needs - but that doesn't mean that it would be the fastest or easiest way to do things.
Obviously that's a more extreme example, but necessary to more easily show the point.
-Daniel
Remove the Google logo next to the word "Objectively"
There you go.
is the insane amount of blogspam that it picks up.
searching for a product name or model number, especially for anything new will bring up thousands of metoo blogs that copy & paste the same fucking press release over and over providing absolutely nothing new to the subject.
fuck that
what am I missing out
You're probably missing a lot of the more obscure web sites. As great as google is, it doesn't cover the entire web. When searching for something hard to find, I often cycle through a few search engines, such as the apparently unknown allthweb. I usually find different results than google can supply.
I haven't seen any updated stats, but back in the early 2000's, I remember that northernlight.com (no longer a public search engine) covered 16% of the internet. It was at the top of the pile. So if google is your entire world, you may be missing a lot.
Anyone have updated stats on how much of the internet is actively covered by google?
...have you asked that question here?
As search technology at all the competitors is constantly evolving, you owe it to yourself to occasionally evaluate varous players and get a handle on what they can do and what each do best. Also, do general searches for critique pages to find out about new entrants in searching.
The better your knowledge of what tools are available, the better you can attack any given search you have at hand.
Find a representative subset of standard search engine queries. Find a representative subset of humanity. Show subset of humanity the results of subset-of-search-engine queries, with any identifying HTML removed, and ask them to choose which resultset for each query was the best. Gather results.
That's about as objective as you could possibly get.
However, this doesn't account for users being smart at refining searches.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Fravia knows the way.......
Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without losing your enthusiasm.........
Search Engine Watch
Search Engine Showdown
They have both been dispensing reliable information for years, and they appear to be the best in this category of websites.
A lawyer & digital forensics examiner. Also an expert on open source software (OSS).
Check out this site: http://www.searchlores.org/.
http://www.ujiko.com/
It looks pretty good.
I often find myself trying to search for things that require special characters in its name, but Google simply drops them from the search. Are there any search engines that would know the difference between "(define (set!..." and "define set"?
In fact, as I try to post this, the Lameness filter is complaining: "Please use fewer 'junk' characters." Why are these characters so frowned upon? Programmers deal with them all the time. Now I'm just writing text to bypass the lameness filter. I guess I need another sentence. And maybe one more.
keywords: microsoft sucks
:)
Google == 658,000 hits
Hotbot == 136,000 hits
AltaVista == 1,350,000 hits
search.msn.com == 1,957,101 hits
keywords:apple sucks
Google == 750,00 hits
Hotbot == 139,000 hits
Altavista == 1,540,000 hits
search.msn.com == 2,415,023
keywords:linux sucks
Google == 620,000 hits
Hotbot == 117,000 hits
Altavista == 1,110,000 hits
search.msn.com == 1,828,755 hits
So there you have it. To break it down:
- msn HATES apple but would use linux before windows.
- Altavista prefers Linux but would use windows before using a mac
- Hotbot was afraid to take a stance.
- Google clearly thinks apple sucks the worst and linux the least.
This is about as objective as you can get
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
if ((performance_increase * time_spent * value_of_work) > (new_interface_learning_curve * your_learning_speed * amount_lost_work * value_of_your_time) {
learn_new_interface();
} else return null;
}
In other words, depending on how much you do with it and how long you spend using it, if the performance increase is greater than the amount of lost time, then go for it. Otherwise don't bother.
like everyone else i use google a lot, and compared to what i think it shd do, it sucks.
/. people accept the horrible flaws of MS as normal.
of course, that is an obkective std, but I wd say people are doing an MS here- they accept the horrible flaws in google as normal, the way non
there are so many wyays google cd be so much better, it is scary.
Every time I go to Google I see the same thing: ©2005 Google - Searching 8,058,044,651 web pages Always the same number of pages. Don't they ever add new information?
Bad name, good search results:
Clusty, aka, Vivisimo: http://clusty.com/
This one has succeeded when Google has failed.
WWW
In other words, depending on how much you do with it and how long you spend using it, if the performance increase is greater than the amount of lost time, then go for it. Otherwise don't bother.
/. and the exact opposite occurs)
Yah but how do you know? Sometimes it is pretty obvious that a change will yield benefit quickly -- but other times, it is less noticable until well after doing it. So many of the things I do today were not obvious as superior ways of doing things -- however, after toying with them for quite some time and making a focused effort on learning for the sake of learning was I then able to reap benefits that far exceeded what I originally anticipated.
If I utilized your equation and simply didn't bother, I would be well behind the curve (mainly because the performance increases are not recognized until after many others have done it) -- however, by being able to set some time aside to try new things for the sake of trying them, I stay slightly ahead of the curve and have reaped benefits because of it. (though sometimes, I try out things like
The first search engine I used was Altavista. I dug the +"good stuff" -crap syntax. Google's exclusion behaviour still strikes me as a little flaky for reasons I can't quite explain.
Google's great... for general searches. But say, for example, that I want to make a case-sensitive search for things that occured between 12/1/97 and 12/15/97 -- there's no way to do it on Google. Altavista's "near" quasi-boolean flag is also nifty, doing a good job of ensuring relevance of your multiple criteria. All in all, I think Google's the superior engine, but Altavista has many features that are sometimes sorely lacking in Google-land.
Google works just fine for me. I frequently use Google at school and have Google Toolbar in my Firefox browser. It has provided what I needed for some time now, and I see no reason to switch search engines for no reason.
There's no reason to investigate whether or not search engines are being objectively compared. Just because one performs well above the rest doesn't mean that there is any bias in the comparisons.
INACTIVE ACCOUNT
First of all, the search "miserable failure" is not a keyword spammers go for. Second, searching for frequently spammed words will give you horrid results (what are you looking for, to buy viagra, to find medical infromation on viagra, to find the chemical composition of viagra, to find the latest news on viagra??) because people will use that term when searching for vastly different things, and even so, the fact that the result is what you consider spam only shows that someone tried to break the search engine. You should judge the SE based on the type of information that you (or the average person) is searching for. Or you could restrict yourself to a certain type of information, such as "spam words", pictures, blogs, educational information, and see which SE finds the best results for that type of information.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Takes into account the ranks.
:msb
The one thing that peeves me about Google is that it doesn't support exact case matching e.g. I can't search for "PVCS" without getting matches for "PVCs".
I remeber when Google was an obscure no-name web search. There was talk about how some nerds had come up with a new way to search results. I tried very early on and fell in love. Long before the masses ever figured it out.
I suspect if there ever is a challenger for Google, it will arise from a similar place. A obscure group of nerds thinking up a new way to search things (outside the box), not a big mega company that is trying to be competitive (like MSN).
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
Actually, Unix and Linux administration is still done almost entirely through the command line. In fact Windows has been severly criticized for being unable to do everything one can do in the GUI through the command line. So it isn't so farfetched.
Before almost 8 years Larry Page has invented "PageRank", the Google "religion", and after that all research on categorization, classification etc. stopped because Google have solved all the problems.
o w.infoi nfo
2 2246
People exploits Google algorithm and Googles' engineers are like warriors on the front lines fighting against it. Every day they have to make new filters and stop bombs.
Here is one excellent example:
Domain
http://0-25-credit-cards.ip2117
http://0-25-intrest-credit-card.ip2117ow.
http://0-60-time-for-nissan-350z.oq12od.info
> SELECT COUNT(*) FROM World Where Domain REGEXP '.*\.[a-z]{2}[0-9]+[a-z]{2}\.info$';
COUNT(*)
1
As you can see there are millions of sites made by one man / organization that bombed Google. Now we, who want to make something new, have chaos in front of us and partly Google is responsible for that. I think that there is big chance for us, people from garage, to jump into search engine market because Google have made huge vacuum with its monopolistic behavior.
that maybe too many of its featured services never get out of beta stage.
The new version of Google news and froogle have been in beta for maybe a couple months. Compare this to such programs as ICQ, which has been in beta since about 1997, and please stop complaining.
"No problem. I have the capacity to do infinite work so long as you don't mind that my quality approaches zero."-Dilbert
I vote for vertical search. Google is great at indexing 4bil pages. But it never searches them, it really just organizes them into high dimensional categories. The world needs intelligent search engines.
(Slightly premature announcement coming up.. but hey - it's Open Source so that's okay, right?)
I've just started a (Java) project to interface to a number of search engines. It might be a good place to start if you feel like doing some coding. See https://argos.dev.java.net/ - there is no release yet but the code is in CVS.
It currently supports Blogdigger, Feedster, Del.icio.us, Google, MSN and Yahoo (and Google Desktop search). I'd like to include Ask.com, too, but they don't provide a programatic interface and I refuse to screen-scrape.
In my opinion none of the other search engines are close to Google in quality of results. I've found (to my surprise) that Ask.com gives me the second best results (they bought the old Teoma search engine, which was always okay. It had an index almost the size of Google's, which neither MSN or Yahoo can match yet.)
Search for "low light low tech tanks" in both. Yahoo returns http://www.aquariaplants.com/lowlighttank.htm, but Google does not. Kind of annoying when that was the site I was looking for, but couldn't remember, and had forgotten to bookmark, the url.
"Tempers are wearing thin. Let's just hope some robot doesn't kill everybody." --Bender
Google may be the de-facto standrad among geeks and newbies alike, but pay attention. Google recently went "public" on the stock market, which means it's now bed-partners with Wall street, and that will lead to a three-some with Wall street's b**ch, the United States Government. Political control of your information needs, anyone? Can anybody think of another time that a computer-related business had a 90% market share, got stockholders, and became Too Big for it's Own Good?
Google is good for regular searching, but Alta Vista's video search is good for helping me find porn. :)
Take off every Sig.
Have less ignorant people than myself figured out ways to test a competing search engine's efficacy for themselves?
Corrected:
Has anyone less ignorant than I am figured out ways to test a competing search engine's efficacy for themselves?
Search engines that mimic human thought are key. Do a search on google for biomimetic search engines, good stuff is happening in this area.
How about because lying seems to be part of MS culture and has been for as long as I can remember. Anyone who asks known liars a question deserves what they get. If I wanted made-up answers to my questions, I'd make up my own.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
Personally, I quite enjoyed the fact that, at least on my viewing, this thread's ad came from Google.
(Should I continue to trust the objectivity of this thread?)
A search engine is only as good as the number of pages about/made by me that it returns when I ego surf. In this regard, DogPile is the best. :)
Posting messages for the betterment of humanity..
http://images.google.com/images?q=dick&hl=en&btnG= Google+Search
http://search.msn.com/images/results.aspx?q=dick&F ORM=QBIR2
http://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images?p=dic k&sm=Yahoo!+Search&fr=FP-tab-img-t&toggle=1
First One to list Dick next to dick Wins
Google triumphs again.
Reminds me of a story during the elections. A friend of mine didn't know that Bush was a cheerleader at yale.
Faster than my mind could stop it, my fingers automatically typed into google image search "Yale Cheerleader Bush" NSFW. Definately not safe in room with CEO and Cheif Engineer.
Wow just checked again Now only 3 pics of GWB & Grandpa.
However http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&lr=&safe=off &q=cheerleader+bush&btnG=Search
Still NSFW.
OSGGFG - Open Source Gamers Guide to Free Games
I'm envisioning a personalized list of searches each with an edit and a go button (like the home page) plus its own set of user-defined terms which will get tacked on automatically.
A Google search is great if you want a basic answer, but there are loads of great sites with more specific information. Try manyforms (link above, or Google it) for examples. Yeah, a lot of the forms submit specific Google searches as well.
I used to use AltaVista a lot. As far as I know, it is still a good search engine. I can't tell you for sure because one day I decided to try Google.
Google appears to be the best general search engine right now. Since it is incredibly reliable, free and easy to use I don't need to go elsewhere a lot. On the rare occasion that Google can't cut it, I will use a different (and usually more specialized) engine or tool.
I'll also use what's there. If my vendor presents a search field in their homepage, I'll probably use it to find the manual. Even then, sometimes their engine turns out to be crap and I find myself going back to Google with a site: keyword.
If my boss mandates that I use MSN, I use MSN. It may be slower and the results may suck but I can salve my concience by knowing that I did the best job I could with the tools he chose to give me.
You Michigan home will become a frozener wasteland.
See this.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
against my own. I am in the process of developing a search engine as we speak and I am frequently comparing the results of mine versus all others. Google is still the best by a quite a decent margin, but there is definitely a lot of room for improvement. I will be releasing a new version of my engine in the next few weeks that will hopefully make searching a bit more intuitive for people out there that haven't designed search engines and don't have the benefit of knowing exactly how they work. Check it out at dumbfind.com. It is an entirely proprietary system written in Java on Linux. Please be gentle as it is still very beta.
You will get a cnet review in the top spots , a review at extremetech or something like that , and a gazzilion pseudo pages that want to sell you said product.
It quite irritating when you are trying to find a review of a product that hasn't been reviewed by any major sites.
In my eyes Google has started slipping , or if you put it in another way , people have learned to manipulate it.
-- TRUST ME! I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING!
see http://a9.com/-/company/whatsCool.jsp
via the "Why use A9.com?" link on their
home page...
that search on dumbfind.com gives the right answer in the number 1 spot too! Does that make it better than Yahoo and MSN? I will settle for 2nd...
Why are Flamingos Pink?
Kartoo is one of the most unique search engines I've ever used, and while a lot of the time it just has the "gee-wiz" factor, sometimes it can really be useful.
Kartoo is basically just a meta-search engine, but what is truly unique about it is the way that it displays the results. Instead of just giving a list of results, it shows a flash "map" of different pages, what links to what, what words link them, different categories, and allows you to click on links between sites to refine your search.
I've found that this is really helpful in two specific circumstances. The first is when you are trying to find something specific, but the keywords for it tend to lead you to a bunch of junk pages, or when you are trying to search for something and you don't know enough about it to know all of the proper keywords. It can also be useful in research to see how different pages are linked together.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Some day I asked myself, what other search engines are there besides google? Well, maybe I should try searching for some. But which search terms are the right ones to use? Actually Google Labs have a service, which is good for this purpose. Go to labs.google.com/sets and put in the name of one or more well known search engines. I got a long list of candidates. Some of the names sounds familiar, others I had not heard about before, but I guess google can also help me find them.
Do you care about the security of your wireless mouse?
Lots of search engines can do this, including jeeves.com
I would like to see a firefox extension that will upon pressing enter in the "search bar" divide the browser into two halves where you can see results of google and Yahoo.
Every now and then google results annoyed me. Then once I was siting at my wife's account and I did a search for "i save rx" on yahoo and this is what I got. For those that do not know, I Save RX is the IL program that lets you fill your prescriptions from Canadian pharmacies. I went to google and got this page of results. So while the yahoo listing was full of spammy questionable sites selling drugs online, the google results had relavant results on at least lines 1, 2, and 4. I guess what I am trying to say is that after using google for a while you notice its warts, but then when you try to use some other search engine, you see just how bad the others can be!
Just so that everyone knows, on google Results 1,2, and 4 are relevant. (I do not know if any more are relevant, I did not hit page down.) I Save RX is a controversial program created by the state of IL that allows certain people to fill prescriptions from Canadian pharmacies. It is truly depressing that the relevant sites run by the state of IL do not show-up anywhere within the first 100 results from yahoo! Instead yahoo is filled with results from spammy questionable sites selling drugs online.
That was a great comparison tool Zordok, thanks for the link!
Can you change your name or something? It's way too easy to confuse with mine.
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
Four out of top four contains the answer as far as i can tell. Six out of top six, even.
s rc=0&o=0
http://web.ask.com/web?q=why+are+flamingos+pink&q
Google Scholar - fast, link to articles that cite it, no reference links, multiple sources, instituitional access, reliable, good ordering
CiteSeer - slow, citations, references, multiple sources (including local), bibtex entry, not a reliable server
PubMed - monster of medical related, fast, no citations, no references, single source, fast, reliable, not best ordering
Scirus - fast, reliable, no citations, no references, single source
Best feature wise is Citeseer but for overall experience Google Scholar puts on a good show
google.com by default.
.
.
For opinions on products, or answers to technical difficulties, or answers to any commonly-asked question, I query groups.google.com. Questions I just can't find an answer to merit a post on the newsgroup that seemed most relevant when searching for the answer.
Genealogical questions, try teoma.com, google.com, ancestry.com, familysearch.com, or freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com . teoma.com might have an edge over google.com for phrases.
I still keep an eye on slashdot.org for science news, but I'm getting fairly dissatisfied with them.
Definitions, dictionary.com.
Background on historical things or proper nouns, wikipedia.com
Movie reviews, either imdb.com or rottentomatoes.com
finance.yahoo.com for current stock market quotes and business news.
And news.google.com for current news.
Jux2 just named metasearch engine of the year by search engine watch.
http://googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1= google&word2=yahoo
...I dunno if you can trust this data without netcraft to back it up though :/
google: 195,000,000
yahoo: 231,000,000
The results:
some information on fictional characters in Mystara
"Even after ten quadrillion years, you can never know that you have achieved immortality - that would take ETERNITY It is not possible to ever - know that you can live forever"
"Bova speculates that various biomedical advances could coalesce into the achievement of human immortality within fifty years."
"Immortality achieved through ones descendents" (from the bible)
"Ron Klatz MD, president of The American Academy of Anti - Aging Medicine , suggests that the human life span will reach 150 years within 30 years and physical immortality will be achieved by mid - century."
This is goddamn impressive. I will definitely try using BB in the future, beats google in quality and presentation (if not in completeness) hands down.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.