The Central Question - How are the Alt Search Engines doing?

By: Charles Knight

In the first essay, we established that for the purpose of these essays the term "alternative search engine” refers to a search engine that is superior to Google in at least one feature, but is not a "new Google."  This essay lays out the types of alternative search engines, and estimates their numbers.

The alternative search engines that are the most prominent are the Vertical Search engines, those that specialize in one particular area such that they produce far superior results compared to a standard, keyword-based, search on a general search engine such as Google.  The largest vertical categories are Health search engines, Semantic Search, People Search, Music/Video Search, and now Image Search.  Within each Vertical are several alternative search engines wrestling for supremacy within that slice of the search pie.  In Health, for example, would be search engines OrganizedWisdom, RightHealth, Healia, ZocDoc, and many more.  In People Search there is PeekYou, Wink, Spock, and more.  In Semantic Search; Hakia, Cognition, TrueKnowledge, Eeggi, and more. 

Remember, alternative search engines are a niche part of the total search market pie, roughly 2% in the US.  The Verticals are only part of that, and each Vertical is a slice of that slice!  But then *within* that tiny sliver, let's say of Image Search, is EyeAlike, SearchMe, Viewzi, Viewdle, Mugr, Picitup, Picollater, et al, each one slightly different from the others. But the verticals can get ever smaller such as Snooth for wine searches, QueryCat which searches only FAQs, and Twing or Omgili which search forums and conversations.

Beyond Vertical search are categories such as Visualization, where the results may be similar, but displayed very differently.  Quintura uses a tag cloud, Taggalaxy.de, a solar system, SearchCube a 3-D Rubik's cube, Yoowalk, a virtual mall, and still more such as KartOO and KoolTorch.  All of these must be seen to be appreciated, and while some deride them as "eye-candy," they are in fact often superior ways of seeing information.

Note that we haven't even explored P2P or Peer-to-peer search (FAROO), shopping or job search verticals, MetaSearch or search tools such as SurfCanyon.  There are so many!

So how many?  Well, as one yardstick, Phil Bradley has made a list of global search engines, those tied to a specific country or area, and it has 4,000 engines!  I stared AltSearchEngines with 1,000 search engines, and for 15 months we have posted new search engines daily and globally, and we can barely keep up with the pace of new projects!  Staring with the goal of one new search engines per day, this past month we added 100 new search engines, or three a day, and still they come! Each month we distill these huge numbers down to "The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines" a job that is increasingly difficult, and even so, with a mere 100 out of thousands, if you looked at each one for only 10 minutes, it would take you 16 hours to do it!

Finally, you might think that with so many individual search engines that their aggregate market share must add up to, well, something, but the sad truth is that they make up less than 2% of the US search market, as noted above.  It's a sad number that has not changed since AltSearchEngines started in June 2007.
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In my third and final essay, I will tackle this dilemma while at the same time trying to answer the Last and Greatest Question: Can Google be defeated?

   

Comments

[Professional Web Design Company USA]

I read some of your articles with great interest today on my first visit here. I too echo the question posted at the end of this post -"Can Google be defeated?" Looking forward to knowing the answer.

[Kun Dang]

The question has to be what is Google doing wrong in search?

The answer? Very little. In fact it's dominance is due to it's success in delivering relevant results even in niche searches.

What I am keen to talk more about is how to improve search with innovations from other search engines. The best ideas are usually picked up and implemented quite quickly with Google. EG: Wiki search.