There has been a lot of buzz around search engines in the past few weeks, including the much hyped but very disappointing cuil.com (pronounced “cool”) and a new tool from Google called Insights for Search. With that in mind here is my Summer 2008 Top 5 Search Newsmakers.
Jux2 Meta Search Engine
Named Best Meta Search Engine by SearchEngineWatch.com, jux2 compares the results of a keyword search using Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The jux2 results page displays clean, easy to understand results from the top 3 search engines. This is a great way to see how your site is ranking.
cuil
Much hyped as the “next” Google, Cuil unabashedly states that it is “The World’s Biggest Search Engine” and ranks pages, not by popularity, but based upon their contents and relevance. The hype may have resulted in the fact that Cuil was created by former Google staff and former AltaVista staff. Regardless, its performance has been less than impressive. A search for our Premiere, Gordon Campbell, displays his photo beside a caption describing him as either a former Scottish football player or a colonial Australian merchant.
Google Insights for Search
Google Insights for Search allows you to compare search volume patterns across specific regions and categories. Like Google Trends, Insights for Search has the capability of comparing multiple search terms, such as Budget Hotel, Discount Hotel, and Cheap Hotel, in order to see which the more popular term is. Insights for Search does one better, sign in using your free Google account and a search using the same 3 search terms will display search volume, something Trends doesn’t do.
Choose the Best Search Engine by Noodle Tools
This brilliant page lists the most appropriate and useful search engine by needs, such as facts on a specific company, general reference answers, opinions on current issues, or health specific issues. Although Google is sufficient for most searches, there are search engines that focus on certain categories or functions. Finding the best one is a lot easier using this list.
Check out NoodleQuest, an interactive guide to help start your search in the right direction.
Cluuz
Cluuz is important because it showcases the evolution of the search engine results page. Cluuz search results are displayed as cluster graphs, images, and tag clouds. A standard search engine shows links in a list. Cluuz reads the searched web pages, extracts important terms and images, clusters them and gives them in chart format (semantic graph) and in a tag cloud where you can click on any entity to further focus your search.
Check out KartOO, a metasearch engine with visual display interfaces. When you click on OK, KartOO launches the query to a set of search engines, gathers the results, compiles them and represents them in a series of interactive maps through a proprietary algorithm.
