Tired of Google. Who else can we use?

[janeth]

I have thought long and hard about this and Google has proven that there search results are not relevant and there not years ahead of other engines.

Since I can not find information I need from day to day to run my business on Google who else can I use.
I tried Inktomi and really was not all that happy with them so I went to MSN they where ok but nothing to write home about but both of these where better then Google.

So I started thinking who made Google so great. It was the SEO people and the web design people so what would stop us from getting behind another small company and seeing if we can not help them out.

I started playing around some with different directories and search engines and found one I like but it needs some work http://www.webworldindex.com/ I emailed Dennis and got an email back in about an hour and he said he would fix some problems that I had.

Here is my question if we where going to start using another search engine to do searches who would you choose.

[cbp]

My vote is www.teoma.com I tend to use Google for most searchs, but switch to them when there is no quck find in Google.

I believe that Teoma has or will soon have the algorithm to challenge Google. Their algorithm is heavily weighted to links from similar sites (themeing), whereas its not clear if Google do this (I don't think they do yet).

THe also try to "cluster results" under headings on the right of the results pages to further nail down what you are searching for. They also list some site on the right of the page that they interpret as being authoriative sites in the area - I think this is defined as a 'hub' - is a relevenat site with lots of info and lots of outgoing links to similar themed sites (...theres that themeing again).

CBP

[Whit]

I always like to give the smaller guys a try. Not the guys who run micro engines solely for PPC or to harvest emails, but the ones who have put some real work into their algorithms and layout.

http://www.gigablast.com
http://www.gimpsy.com
http://www.searchhippo.com


My two cents...

[minstrel]

My vote is www.teoma.com
Thanks, cbp:

I'd never hear of these guys before but I like:

(1) the interface and how the results are displayed
(2) the right-side hypertopics or whatever they're called
(3) (most important!) I'm in the top 5 for all my major keywords and, unlike Google, higher than that one-page crappy website that beats me out for one of the search phrases in Google :-)

Now all we need to do is spread the word and have the rest of the world switch to teoma <-- think this will help? ;-)

[janeth]

I would like to see a new player in the game instead of the same old ones.

[Whit]

Teoma is a service mark of Ask Jeeves, Inc. All rights reserved.

My initial searches, using some of minstrel's keywords, produced almost identical results between Teoma http://www.teoma.com/and Ask Jeeves http://www.ask.com/

*shrug* It seemed like a relevant thing to point out.

[janeth]

So, it sounds like they are like most everyone else.
I guess i'm back to http://www.webworldindex.com/

I have not tried
http://www.gigablast.com
http://www.gimpsy.com
http://www.searchhippo.com

yet has anyone else?

[minstrel]

As you pointed out, Whit, teoma is a subsidiary of askjeeves so the similarities aren't surprising... I never liked the askjeeves interface and therefore don't use it - teoma might be more attractive for that reason, although it's an awkward name to remember (I keep wanting to type "teomi").

However, Janeth, I wouldn't agree that it's "like most everyone else" - try some of your keywords there: for me, the results seem quite different from Google, MSN, AltaVista...

[dmcgill]

Thanks for mentioning us Janeth!! I am flattered.
Something that most SEO's if not all is the way different engines have the search working.
Google allows you to combine words and searches for the exact word phrase. For example. If you search for a site using the search term, webmaster resourses, the pages that Google will send you will be pages that rank the highest for the phrase you typed in.
Search Engines like Altavista, Yahoo and dmoz do not do it that way. They will return pages to you first that are relevant for the word webmaster first, then resourses then webmaster resourses. Searching in Yahoo, dmoz and webworldindex.com one must keep this in mind and use the most relavent words in a search. For us old timers, we are used to searching that way. For the Googleites, it is hard to learn.

dmcgill

[joelkatona]

Janeth, thank you for the great discovery. It's nice to see some new “faces” on the search engine landscape with a real potential.
I do have one comment though about the relevancy of searches on http://www.webworldindex.com/. When I try to search for multi keyword phrases I am targeting on Google the results are less than impressive. For example searching for the keyword phrase seo+tools, or the exact phrase “seo tools” the top 5 sites have nothing to do with SEO. I must admit though searching for “website promotion tools” gives me much better results.

[rlrouse]

WebWorldIndex has some incredibly useful content for webmasters.

[janeth]

Hi joelkatona,
The thing I love most about http://www.webworldindex.com/ is that if I have a question or do not like something I can email them and get an answer back.

I brought your question up to them and got this back.

Our search searches in this order;
1. keywords
2. title
3. headings
All the above must be in metatags or the search will come up empty. If you type a search word or phrase like: seo tools, it will try and find seo first. If it doesn't find seo, it will then find tools.
If anyone had submitted to us and used seo as a keyword, it would have found the page.
I think the main missunderstanding about our search engine is that people don't understand we are building our own data base. Anyone can pull results from dmoz, altavista, aol and more but we pull from our own. It cannot be as good as google that has millions of websites and google doesn't even read meta tags any more. They search content. With a metasearch like google uses, you can do that. With a directory like we use, you can't.

I guess it all comes down to preference.

I do hope he does not mind me posting the answer here but it does help a lot in understanding how things work.

[joelkatona]

Janeth, thank you for firing that question off to them.
Their explanation does shed some light on how their searches are executed. I think the particular search term I have used "seo tools" is not your average search term since “seo” is an abbreviation. I have tried searching for "seo" and it returns no results, except for sponsored results. So it makes sense for my previous query seo+tools I saw unrelated websites come up in their listing.

[janeth]

Hi joelkatona,
You should submitt your site to them I get a couple hits a week from there site.

Your site would be a good one for that search