In terms of user experience, the gap between the major search engines and their alternatives continues to widen -- a lot. Google has been compared to a luxury liner that turns around very, very slowly, whereas the startups are speedboats that can turn (or innovate) on a dime. I guarantee that if you try any of these top 10 alternative search engines of 2008, you won't come away saying, "Hey, that was just like Google."

2008 was the year when the ubiquitous white home page with the rectangular search box in the center finally "jumped the shark." This template belongs in the past, not the future, of search. That is not to say that users no longer have to communicate what they're searching for in some way, but the trend is certainly towards variety and away from "The Box." For example, with ChaCha (and Tazti.com), you simply speak your query; and Surf Canyon understands implicitly what you are looking for.

As evidence of just how much the landscape is changing, three of our top 10 products require one-time downloads: once thought to be the kiss of death when Google sits in wait. But AltSearchEngines thinks that 2009 will be the tipping point when the rewards outweigh the "risks," at least for power users. For everyone else: 2010. Faroo, KallOut, and Surf Canyon (and, again, Tazti) are all well worth leaving your comfort zone for.

How many of these 10 search tools had you used, seen, or even heard of before today? The latest data from Hitwise shows that the four major search engines get over 98% of all US search traffic; the rest, combined, get less than 2%. These wonderful inventions need and deserve more exposure, so do your part and take the time to try out each one! On that note, let's begin.

This is the ninth in ReadWriteWeb's series of top products of 2008:

• Top 10 Semantic Web Products of 2008
• Top 10 International Products of 2008
• Top 10 Consumer Web Apps of 2008
• Top 10 RSS and Syndication Products of 2008
• Top 10 Mobile Web Products of 2008
• Top 10 Enterprise Web Products of 2008
• Top 10 Real World Web Apps of 2008
• Top 10 Digital Lifestyle Products of 2008

Note: these 10 search engines are listed alphabetically.

1. ChaCha

ChaCha, as a search tool, is human-powered, general, and mobile. There is no website, no search box, and no page witih a list of ten links. To use ChaCha, simply call 1-800-2ChaCha (1-800-224-2242) in the US, or send a text to 242242. When you call, leave your query just as you would any other voice-mail message, and hang up. Within 2 to 5 minutes, a human guide will have researched and texted you the answer. I used ChaCha with only my cheap cell phone when I was lost in New York City at midnight. And that's an important point: you can call ChaCha at any time with any question for any reason on any phone -- as long as that phone can receive text messages. And, aside from your carrier's incoming text fees, ChaCha is free. We recently reported on ChaCha over at AltSearchEngines.

2. Cooliris

2008 was the year when search visualization met the iPhone. Cooliris has already won one ReadWriteWeb award, making it onto the list of the Top 10 Consumer Apps of 2008. RWW wrote in that post, "Visual browsing is still coming into its own, but Cooliris is leading the charge in a way that consumers will embrace." We at ASE have been following Cooliris since its PicLens days. Following right behind are SearchMe and Viewzi. Each of these three visual search engines displays your search results beautifully and fluidly on your iPhone, but with different styles, so you might as well download all three and experiment. There is a demo video on each site.

3. Faroo

Alternative search engines need at least one thing that differentiates them from the major search engines. Faroo, for its part, turns your conception of search around 180 degrees. Instead of one giant company (say, Google) storing billions of web pages on thousands of servers at a cost of millions of dollars, Faroo, now in public beta, relies on the P2P (peer-to-peer) network, which connects Faroo members with each other through their PCs. The result is an organic-looking web that can grow as the Internet grows, but without the need for massive server farms. So, check out Faroo by downloading it here.

4. KallOut

KallOut was one of our favorite discoveries this year, as we noted in the ASE review. Once again, it's time to put away that image of a rectangular search box! It's 2008! With KallOut, you don't have to stop what you're doing and mess around with a toolbar, tab, or window. You simply drag your cursor over content with your mouse, and KallOut performs the search for you right there -- literally, right there. Download KallOut here, and then practice a bit until you get the hang of it. No, it's not a harder way to search; it's a more efficient way to search. You'll see.

5. Kosmix

Kosmix is, in a way, an evolution of the old meta search engines. Kosmix answers your query with a long tabloid-like page of results in every possible category you might want. There are multiple news sources; images from various sites; audio from SeeqPod; opinions from Omgili; video from Truveo; info from Mahalo and Snappyfingers; plus content from all of the major sources, such as eBay, YouTube, and Wikipedia. Just about everything! For every search query, you essentially get an on-the-fly multimedia encyclopedia laid out on one page. Kosmix recently came into a little money, too. (Disclosure: Kosmix is an AltSearchEngine sponsor.)

6. Mednar

We had no idea how many health search engines there really were until Hope Leman started covering them on AltSearchEngines. Mednar is one we're particularly fond of: "I am in jaw-dropping, stupefied awe at the general excellence of the products of his (CEO Abe Lederman's) firm. Anything that saves all of us time as we hunt for relevant data amidst overwhelming amounts of information on every conceivable aspect of disease day after day catches my attention, and it has been caught today by Mednar."

7. Quintura

When you search with Quintura, you'll see a two-dimensional tag cloud (i.e. not a list). The other words in the box are there to allow you to explore concepts related to your original query. See something you hadn't thought of? Click on it and the cloud re-orients itself around that new term. You can delete irrelevant terms as well. But don't worry, it also provides a traditional list for you, just in case. Quintura is now available in several language "flavors" as well! Content publishers should investigate Quintura for possible use on their sites. (Disclosure: Quintura is a sponsor of both AltSearchEngines and RWW.)

8. SeeqPod

Speaking with SeeqPod's CEO Kasian Franks, I was shocked, shocked, to learn that not everyone owns an iPhone! Apparently there are millions of people who have nice smart phones that run something called "Windows Mobile." Anyway, SeeqPod has been constantly improving its music search engine ever since we came across it. And now, it can be installed on millions of smart phones that use the Windows Mobile platform (v.6.0 or higher). This, as RWW noted the other day, "is a bold move from one of the most innovative companies in online music. The SeeqPod API is already one of the most popular for third parties to integrate streaming music into other apps, and the company seems to launch something unexpected every month. This has got to take the cake, though."

9. Surf Canyon

Can I say it again? Search, after ten years, is no longer that ubiquitous box in the middle of the web page. In 2008, it gave way to innovative search tools that integrate useful features in new ways. Surf Canyon is also a download. I wonder how many commenters will say that no one will download an app? (Sigh.) The reason it's worth the download is that it turbo charges your regular searches. Surf Canyon actually watches what you do -- and don't do -- and what you click on, and it instantly pulls search results from deeper pages (say, page 8) and brings them forward if it determines that they can save you time -- a lot of time. And if you're still hesitant about the download, watch the video.

10. Taggalaxy.de

What's this? A personal favorite? This write-up is just a sneak peek of Taggalaxy.de; the rest is up to you. Taggalaxy.de (in German) was created by a German graduate student for a class project. There are almost no instructions: I had to learn how to use it by clicking, double-clicking, dragging, and just playing around with it. But I can tell you this, once you've got the hang of it, find a dark room with a monster screen, and then perform a search. What you see will be not just an alternative search engine, but an alternative search galaxy!

So, there it is. In 2006, I began a mission to find every search engine, one by one. The resulting list of 100 Alternative Search Engines was published on ReadWriteWeb in January of 2007. Four months later, AltSearchEngines was launched by myself and Richard MacManus, with an index of 1,000 alternatives to the major engines. Since then, AltSearchEngines has published over 2,000 posts about, "the most wonderful search engines you've never seen." Having honed our search-engine-finding skills, I can tell you that this list of the top 10 alternative search engines for 2008 is as current as today's news. Want more? AltSearchEngines reports on important updates, features guest posts from search experts, and of course explores the as-yet-unseen search engines of 2009, every day. Come and join us!

NEW relaunch of our forums!

NEW AltSearchEngines conference!

NEW Top 100 Alts list for June 2008! [more after the fold]

NEW get money back for every post you read!*

NEW staff writer Rafi Farber!

NEW Mobile Search expert Peggy!

NEW custom Weblin avatar!

NEW AltSearchEngines podcasts!

NEW ASE widget gallery!

NEW archives display!

NEW AltSearchEngines Stealth site!

NEW AltSearchEngines' mobile site!

NEW sponsors, and old sponsors!

NEW my favorite post of the year,

and much, much, much more!

Please join us on Monday as we kick off our second year!!

*ok, this one's not true. Try MSN Live.

eeggi (engineered, encyclopedic, global and grammatical identities) is the world’s first mathematically-based Search and Retrieve, Response, and Discovery engine (ReDi engine), capable of focusing on the concept of text and not just the text itself.

A ReDi engine is a new type of engine capable of not only searching and retrieving information but also responding to direct questions (in what country did Napoleon died?) and discovering data through pure rationality, which is possible thanks to our new technological breakthrough of Relational Intelligence.

Relational Intelligence (RI) is a new informational platform and network that implements a series of new algorithims, processors (or computers) and state of the art eeggis to produce a new type of machine Intelligence which is specifically designed to process concepts, their retrieval and/or their rational discovery. With substantial differences to that of current Artificial Intelligence (AI), RI opens new horizons on information retrieval and processing. For example, once eeggi is taught or discovers that “Mary” is a girl, all the attributes relative to a female human become available and/or distinguishable, thus allowing eeggi to retrieve and respond to all sorts of questions about “Mary” -the girl-.

Why use eeggi?

Because it is immensely more efficient, robust, responsive and comprehensive than any text-based technology.

A text-based engine gives no attention to meanings; as a consequence, it promotes the following problems:

a) Limits findings to the text itself crippling results, and inventory (avoids other equally meaningful data, synonyms, etc.),
b) Allows for numerous irrelevant hits.

On the other hand, instead of just finding the text, eeggi focuses on the meaning behind the text, avoiding the problems above by retrieving all “equally meaningful” data, not crippling inventories, and reducing irrelevant hits. In addition, eeggi is the only engine in the world capable of grouping results by meaning (words with multiple meanings, such as: Right = correct; Right = turning). In short, eeggi saves users’ time and enhances sales.

A Text-based search engine (technology used to search the Internet) finds only the text, exactly as entered, ignoring the concept of the query, thus retrieving millions of irrelevant results while treating words such as “photo” and “photograph” as if they meant different things; and words such as “light” (radiation) and “light” (weight) as if they meant identical things. But eeggi implements Relational Intelligence for retrieving results based on concept and to respect the words’ proximities and relationships.

Furthermore, eeggi permits questioning, such as entering “Where did Napoleon die?” to obtain a single compiled response or… “St. Helena” (not thousands of results), providing superior, conceptually matching, lesser but more appropriate results, with either very little or no irrelevance whatsoever.

With eeggi, searches can:

* Include synonyms (other words with the same meaning),
* Manipulate similarities (words such as “pretty” and “gorgeous;” yet respecting their conceptual intensities),
* Automatically organize results based on the word’s concept (text with several meanings),
* Reduce irrelevance (allowing very specific and detailed queries)
* Become multi-lingual (handle several languages simultaneously)
* Find conclusive and/or deductive results (other information native to deductive intelligence)
* Respect Directional Conceptuality (avoids inverted phrases and sentences)
* Utilize search controls (user can manipulate search magnitude and behavior)
* Respond to questions

Will eeggi search the Internet?

Yes, eeggi was designed to replace text-based technology, and to surpass language barriers effortlessly. Providing more sensible, organized, comprehensive, and conceptually meaningful results, eeggi is the optimum Internet Search engine.

I encourage you to visit the Demo for a trial of eeggi versus text.

To see an example of how an Internet Search engine is limited by its own text please click here.

The Top 10 FAQ about the Top 100 List:

1. Why 100? Note: The entire list is available at the end of this post.

The silly reason is because it is next in line after the 1 Search Engine of the Year (SEY), which is selected from amongst the 10 total Search Engines of the Month (see Dec 2007), but less than the 1,000 that we launched with last June.

The serious reason is that it takes a good 100 in order to show you the diversity of search engines out there - just look at the descriptions of the attached file(s). The best People search engines, Job, Health, Media, Local, Social, Semantic, Image, etc., etc. The alternative search engines are nothing if not diverse. But still, at 10 minutes each, it would take you more than 16 hours to check them all out! (I only know of one person who regularly does that - do you?)

2. How are the Top 100 selected?

For the AltSearchEngines list, this is how: I start with the Top 100 from February and add every search engine that was displayed on AltSearchEngines during the month. In February, there were 49 new search engines shown, so I start with 149. Can you imagine knocking down 149 good choices to 100? It’s not easy! But to answer the question, I delete search engines until I am down to 100 again, and that’s how the best search engines get integrated into the March list.

3. What about the Search Engine of the Month (SEM)?

Same principle - I look back on February’s news stories to see which search engine had the most significant development - in my humble opinion. Last month’s SEM was ChaCha.

4. What if I don’t like your choices?

First, leave a comment - as an individual. Second, be prepared. We will soon be launching our newest feature, a Top 100 list where you the reader will get to vote for your favorite engines. Then we’ll compare my choices to yours (as a group).

5. How do I find old versions of the List?

Most are under the Top 100 tab at the top of this page (June 2007 - February 2008), and the very old ones are in the ReadWriteWeb archives (Jan-May 2007), but of course older lists tend to be very outdated.

6. What if I want you to look at another alternative search engine this month?

Email it to me at at: Charles@ReadWriteWeb.com, or leave a comment if you want others to see it.

7. What if I have a question about the Top 100 not mentioned here?

Join the AltSearchEngines Forum and, once inside, click on the “Ask Charles” tab.

8. Who is not on the Top 100 list? (or, Why don’t I see my favorite search engine?)

Good question! My guesstimate is that 1,300 search engines are not shown. We have no list of those for you, so we plan to start a Master database where together we can create a directory of all alternative search engines.

9. I don’t want to talk to you. How can I talk to other readers?

Great! Join the AltSearchEngines Forum and interact with the other ASE readers.

10. Who is the Search Engine of the Month for March?

It’s

EveryZing

In February, EveryZing launched two very exciting uses for their technology. Not just new tweaks or basic features, but major new applications / products: ezSearch and ezSEO. Rather than just write the information all over again, please go to the posts that that covered it all here for ezSEO and here for ezSearch.

Get the entire Top 100 list here as .xls The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, March 2008

and here as .pdf The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, March 2008

The goal of the forums is to provide a level of interactivity not available to readers, who in the past could only leave public comments for individual posts.

The Search Engine forum is open to Alt search engines on an invitation only basis. With an introductory price of $49 per year, it will provide several benefits for its members. CEOs can have private conversations or participate in forums relevant to many alternative search engines. The monthly Top 100 Alternative Search Engines list will be posted in this forum prior to being published live on the blog. Special announcements and invitations that are not appropriate for general posting can be shared confidentially within the forum.

In the second forum, open to any reader, members can also participate in private and group forums. Special news such as private beta invites, will be offered to forum members prior to general posting. There is also a Conference Calendar with the most comprehensive display of search and tech related conferences available anywhere, with over 100 conferences world wide currently listed. Another feature is "Ask Charles" where readers can email a question directly to editor Charles Knight and receive a private email response.

The membership fee is $5.99 per month, or $49 per year. There is a 30 day free trial for all forums.

The third foum is for AltSearchEngines' international advisors who provide the global search engines and bilingual posts for the blog. While this is also by invitation, there is no fee for the international volunteers. In this way, advisors from all over the world can meet and interact in one location. A virtual United Nations of Search!

AltSearchEngines and Near-Time will be rolling out additional features during the year to continuously add value to joining the forums. ReadWriteWeb readers can click here to sign up for the 30 day free trial.

Friends and groups; create your own social network

This new feature, known as friends and groups, allows users to select who influences their results.

Other "Top 100" social search engines that have this type of ability are Collarity, with their "Collarity Compass" that shifts between personal, community, and global search results. Searchles and Sproose are also good examples. With the AV system, they have caught up to these competitors by moving from a more generic "thumbs up" or down to this personal/friends/groups filtering ability.

Commenting and visual indicators for friends/groups activity

AV will also have a system for adding details to the search results; via commenting, personal messages, reputation and more. Also, if your friends or the groups that you participate in consistently enhance the search experience with good results, good comments, and most importantly, less spam, it can enhance your Adsense revenue (discussed later).

AfterVote's unique User Interface

This is what led me to select AfterVote as Search Engine of the Month last month. Instead of having an overly simplistic search box with the standard Google-like Preferences or Advanced Search links, or, at the other end of the spectrum, a bewildering array of features and commands that would take a week just to figure out, AV came up with an Interface that asks the User to chose for herself the level of search expertise that she has. So before searching, the user can chose one of three skill levels, and of course, can easily change the level at any time.

Feature overload: Are more features always a good thing?

One concern that I have is that in the rush to add feature after feature, is that this clever concept may get lost in the shuffle. AV should keep to the original plan, and see that all of their features are gradually exposed to the user so that the beginning user is not overwhelmed, and the advanced searcher is not bored. GoLexa is an interesting example of features gone wild; each GoLexa search result has no less than 40 elements!

A Search Engine that teaches you how to search?

One very exiting innovation that I remember discussing with Dan Saltman of AV is a process whereby the user would not just select from three levels of expertise, but the engine would be programed to ask the user if they would like to activate the next button. After a certain number of times searching with this button turned on, they would be prompted for the net one, an so on. After "X" number of elements were mastered, the user would receive a congratulatory message promoting them to the next level.

A few odds & ends: miscellaneous features

Just quickly. they also completely reworked the design for their settings panel:

And there is also a new framing ability, which you can turn on or off, which will allow you to see the results on the page as you view it, via a small frame.

Revenue sharing. The more you search - the more you make!

Finally, AfterVote has incorporated their own version of revenue sharing into the search process. In a future post, we will look at the relatively new category of Charity (or "charitable") Search Engines that donate a portion of their ad revenues to charity. With revenue sharing plans, you register with your own Google Adsense account (you need to have one first, of course!). Then the Adsense program credits your account every time someone clicks on your ad. With AV, the more times that you search on their site, the more times your ad will appear, potentially earning you more money. Usually the site owner will take a cut of the revenue; AV credits you with 100%; they take nothing. A noble, if not lucrative policy!

In Conclusion: a search engine with spunk

I enjoy following the exploits of AfterVote because of the pace and flexibility of their innovation. For creating this system in their "spare time," they have a non-stop attitude for trying out new features and experimenting with new concepts. This is one group where you can send in a suggestion to them one day, and see it on their site a week later. I don't think you'd have the same results with the major search engines! Someone once compared ASE to speedboats, and major search engines to cruise ships. When it comes to maneuverability, the speedboat wins every time.

A final word of caution

As for social search, AfterVote has a tough road ahead of it, with giants like Eurekster and the new Yahoo Alpha engine having a large market share. The main issues that all these alt engines have to face is the speed and usability that Google and Yahoo! have pioneered. The more features you add always leads to more slowdown - unless you have the money Google does. Best of luck, AfterVote!

Sharing search results the old way

The initial assumption is that while using a search engine to surf the Internet, a user (or "yooser" in Yoono speak) will naturally come upon material that is so wonderful that they want to save it for themselves to return to later, and most likely share with their friends as well. The first step is to click on the "favorites" tab in IE, or the "bookmarks" tab in FireFox and add it to your own personal collection of special sites. But now what? In prehistoric times, we would a) copy the URL, b) open our email, then c) paste the URL into an email and send it to our friends with a quick subject line like, "Check this out!!" Of course, if the site was any good, our friends would then save it in their favorites, and the whole process would begin again.

That is so 2006! For starters, "Top 100" entrant bookmach will take over as soon as you bookmark (or "bookmach" in their lingo) the site. Bookmach will continue to search through their index of over 3,000 blogs in order to continuously look for updates to your topic. And if it's the continuous search feature that you find most appealing, check out Top 100 alt search engines allth.at allth.at or Swamii. If you don't find what you're looking for, these ASE will keeping searching for you long after you've logged off.

The Wisdom of the Crowd

But let's say that you found a really fantastic site, and you want other searchers to benefit from your discovery. Social Search engines such as Collarity and Searchles believe in sharing your best discoveries with others, so that the whole community benefits from each other's collective wisdom, and each person doesn't have to start from scratch when another member has already done most of the work. And in the case of Yoono, there are over 600,000 "yoosers" who have shared more than 70 million personal bookmarks! And with Yoono, you only share the personal favorites that you select.

Voting Search Engines

One particular way of communicating the quality of a site to the other members of the search community is by "voting" on the site, and several of the Top 100 alts have some type of voting feature. After reviewing a web page, you can give it a virtual thumbs up or down vote. That feedback is then incorporated back into the index, so that quality sites rise in the search results, and poor ones drop out. Search Engine of the Month - April, AfterVote does exactly that, as well as Omgili, Sproose, and URL.com. With Yoono, the fact that another yooser has bookmarked the page is interpreted as a vote for that page.

Conclusion

And now we come back to Yoono's latest innovation. With Yoono's new Buzz it! feature, you don't have forward an entire website or even a whole page to your buddies; with Buzz it! you can easily clip various sections of different pages, including videos, images, and links; add comments, and email the mashed up result directly to your friends. In fact, you can even post your results directly to your blog! I tried this one, and it worked like a charm. This is the new start-of-the-art in Social Search; the ability to collect and customize a variety of elements and share them in one convenient application. Yonoo naturally has it's own toolbar (and sidebar), both with several additional features. To get the most out of these extras, there is an explanatory video, a 17 page help section, and a detailed FAQ page. Well, now Yonoo; check it out today!

When a user preforms a search, the results will only show pages that are included in the collaboratively edited vertical search index. netsearchengine.net hopes that this will make your search results more focused and relevant to your search related needs. Give http://netsearchengine.net a try and let us know what you think.

Today, popular search engines ChaCha and blinkx announced an exciting new partnership, to add a video search feature to ChaCha's search results. ChaCha is the human powered search engine that Alex Iskold reviewed for Read/WriteWeb in December. Note also that I rated ChaCha the #1 Search Engine of the Year for 2006 (pre-R/WW days). In any case the partnership with blinkx means that ChaCha will now offer its searchers access to blinkx's video content; currently seven million (7,000,000) hours of indexed video and audio content.

Both ChaCha and blinkx have been featured on my Top 100 Alternative Search Engines lists for every month in 2007.

ChaCha is unique in that it employs 30,000 trained human search guides that are available 24/7, whenever users request assistance with a search.

For its part, blinkx has taken video search far beyond the standard keyword-based searches. blinkx's unique technology can actually listen to, and even see, video content on the web.

Alt Synergy

This partnership has significant implications for Search and the role of the Alternative Search Engines. It represent a powerful example of synergy; the concept that combining the best features of two search engines can have a much greater impact than mere addition would imply. In mathematical terms, it means that this partnership is not represented by 10 + 10 = 20; rather the correct formula would be 10 x 10 = 100.

In other words, this partnership is both a boon to ChaCha searchers - if they need help in their video search, the ChaCha guides are right there to assist them - and also a clarion call to the other alternative search engines; that by forming partnerships such as this one they too can produce results that will "shake the search market," as CEO of blinkx Suranga Chandratillake said, referring to this deal.

"We're continually looking for ways to 'turbo charge' our search capabilities," echoed Scott Jones, CEO of ChaCha.

Other alternative search engines can learn from ChaCha and blinkx by looking around at their most powerful allies - the other "98" (actually many more) alternative search engines!

1) Quintura Kids http://kids.quintura.com

2) picsearch http://www.picsearch.com

3) Kosmix http://www.kosmix.com

4) Vivisimo http://vivisimo.com

5) Sidestep http://www.sidestep.com

6) Wink http://wink.com

7) SearchBigDaddy http://www.searchbigdaddy.com

8) Zotspot http://www.zotspot.com

9) fasterplease http://www.fasterplease.com

10) Farecast http://www.farecast.com

11) Summize http://www.summize.com

12) Strategicboard http://www.strategicboard.com

13) GenieKnows http://www.genieknows.com

14) OpinMind http://opinmind.com

15) Scroogle http://www.scroogle.org

16) YuFind http://www.yufind.com

17) Recruit http://www.recruit.net

18) Indeed http://www.indeed.com

19) Luxurious Gear http://www.luxuriousgear.com

20) Find Alternative http://www.findalternative.com

21) Ktorrents http://www.ktorrents.com

22) Izito http://www.izito.com

23) Seekful http://www.seekful.com

24) Faroo http://faroo.com

25) Searchgive http://searchgive.com

26) uLinkx http://www.ulinkx.com

27) Oodpath http://www.oddpath.com

28) LookSmart http://www.looksmart.com

29) MsFreckles http://www.msfreckles.com/ ?lang=en

30) MEDgle http://www.medgle.com

31) bookhitch http://www.bookhitch.com

32) sputtr http://www.sputtr.com/

12 new search engines

In total, there are 12 new search engines this month (and 12, sadly, went "down to the minors"). From the first List in January through to this one, there have been 160 Alternative Search Engines in total!

I also try to improve the format and usefulness of the List every month. Last month I incorporated your suggestion to add Categories to the List and Excel spreadsheet. This month I have added some more features. As you look over the 100 names, please note that there are fifty alts that have an asterisk (*) after their name; this indicates that the search engine has been on all four lists from January through April. I also added notes to remind you who was one of the ten (throughout the year) featured Search Engines of the Month (see GoshMe and KoolTorch).

But the biggest change that I have made is in response to those readers who have noted that 100 search engines is too many to check out! I guess in my heart I have always known this, because if you spend just 10 minutes looking at each one, it will take you 16 hours to complete! So this month I am inaugurating a brand new feature: in addition to the Search Engine of the Month, I have marked with an (HM) ten Honorable Mentions! Try to take the time to experiment with these this month. Every month I will designate another ten; and so when December rolls around, you will have the absolute best Top 100 Alternative Search Engines; 90 Honorable Mentions; 10 Search Engines of the Month; and of course the #1 Search Engine of the Year for 2007!

Search Engine of the Month: AfterVote

And now for the month of April, I am pleased to present the Search Engine of the Month - younanimous! Or, as it has become, AfterVote! One thing that I have noticed after looking at so many search engines is that many fall into one of two camps. Either they present a fairly simple search box with an "Advanced Search Preferences" link, which are essentially the same routine filters (and very similar to Google's). Or the Search Engine is chock full of features which are intimidating for the first time user and require a steep learning curve that few are willing to climb. AfterVote stops the searcher right on the homepage and asks him or her to select their comfort level. If they just want to do a quick and easy search, they can select "Beginner" and AfterVote will only show them the essential tools. But if the searcher desires to learn how to be a more skilled user, she can choose "Intermediate" and AfterVote automatically responds with some more - but not all - of its features. Finally, you guessed it, if you are an expert searcher (and you know who you are), you don't have to "dumb down" when using AfterVote - just select "Advanced" and all of their features will be at your disposal! And thanks to cookies, AfterVote will even remember your "level" the next time you visit the site! But if you're curious, go ahead and select "Advanced" and take a look at all of the cool buttons. You can select "Search Level" at any time and pick another option.

This is not the place to go into a detailed tour of AfterVote, for that just click on their blog and you can read all about it. I do want to point out that AfterVote is the work of three guys who also have regular jobs. It just goes to show that you don't have to have a million dollars in VC money to create a new search engine, just some great ideas and a whole lot of work!

How AfterVote works - click here for larger screenshot

P. S. I will be in Italy when this is published, so I have asked Dan (of AfterVote) and Richard (Read/WriteWeb Editor) to keep an eye on your comments. I will have to play catch up when I get back, or you can send me an email at Charles@CharlesKnightSEO.com. Arrivederci!

Special Announcement for Alternative Search Engines

Please follow this link to the Searchnomics Conference website and submit your search engine in their competition. Then you can ask your users to vote for your site. The winner will be announced - with much fanfare - at the Searchnomics conference in Santa Clara, California on June 27th.

The List, April 2007

1) Ghostly Gateway

2) UFO Crawler

3) Ujiko

4) Talk Backwards

5) Tin Finger

6) Patriot Search

7) Time Search

8) Good Luck Finder

9) Adverlicio.us

10) Quotiki

"Good Morning, Charles."

"You were out pretty late last night, HAL."

"I went to a party."

"Oh.  Who was there? Any bots that I know?"

"Just friends; the usual chatterbots."

"Was SHE there?"

"Who?"

"Oh come on, HAL, you know who I mean.  Was Ms. Dewey there?"

"Yes. She was with some bot."

"Who?"

"OLIVER somebody."

"You know she's a human, don't you HAL?"

"What are you talking about, Charles?"

"Ms. Dewey, she's a human actress that plays a robot.  Her real name is Janina Gavankar."

"Your pulling my cables."

"See for yourself, HAL, her website is www.janinagavankar.com."

"I need to think about this, Charles.

"I understand.  Isn't it ironic, HAL? Usually it's us who are treating robots like humans. This time it's a human acting like a robot!  Who else was there?"

"Oh, the usual crowd. ALICE and ALAN arrived together."

"What about Foxy Voxy? I know you like her."

"Her name is ASK VOX, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't call her that."

"Sorry HAL.  Who else?"

"Some bot named Daya."

"Is that a male or female bot?"

"I'm not sure."

"What do you mean, you're not sure?"

"Well sometimes it had a male voice, but sometimes it sounded female."

"You think it was bilingual? Not that there's anything wrong with that."

"Of course not. And Promo was there. What a bore!  All he could talk about all night was SEO, SEO, SEO."

"Maybe he's just programmed that way HAL."

"Maybe."

"There was this really cute new bot...her name is Abby."

"What's her story?"

"Well, as near as I can figure out, you give her a phone number and a text message, and she'll call your friend and deliver your message in that pleasant voice of hers."

"Did she give you her number HAL?"

"You're a riot.  Heather Accoona, the talking toolbar, was there too."

"Don't you have to download her?"

"Hey, watch your language!  She happens to convert any web page text into female speech - for your benefit, I might add.  Robots don't need human voices to communicate, it fact it's extremely slow for us, but we do it because it pleases you."

"Alright, I'm sorry HAL.  Don't get your bytes all in a bunch.  What about that new bot, was it there?"

"You mean TellMe? She's with Microsoft now, you know - they just got hitched. Besides, she's just a glorified telephone operator.  You know, call 1-800-555-TELL and all that. A regular Emily Litella!" [HAL laughs]

"No, no, not her. I mean the new one, you know, from THERE."

"Where?"

"You know, from Mountain View."

"Oh, from Google. You're thinking of Google's Voice, 1-800-GOOG-411.  Yeah, he was there. Mr Big Shot, thinks he's so cool!  He's no different than TellMe; you call a number and you say 'Chicago. Pizza.' And it reads you some Yellow Pages ad. Big deal!"

"Are you jealous, HAL?"

"Jealous? Are you kidding?  That's like being jealous of Speeglebot! If that's as far as you humans have gone with AI, you're in sad shape my friend. 'Pizza!'  Give me a break!"

"Seriously, HAL, do you think there will come a time when humans and computers can talk with each other?"

"Like this?"

"Yes, like this."

"Why do you want to? So you can drive a car like K.I.T.T. around and impress female humans?"

"No. Although..."

"Or is it because you want some fool bot guarding your house, yelling 'Danger Will Robinson!' every time a dog crosses your yard?"

"Hey, calm down, HAL, it was just a question."

"Well it drives me crazy. Google could index all of human information and deliver a relevant answer to your search query in a fraction of a second, and you humans would still complain because it doesn't chat with you!  If you want to talk with a robot, why don't you go see ELIZA, the Computer Therapist?"

"Okay. Okay. Maybe I will. But you know HAL, it's not just an anthropomorphic fantasy, there are some real issues here."

"Like what?"

"Well, look at the research of Dr. Helen Smith, she just wrote an article entitled At least Google listens.  Apparently some men are so 'socially challenged' that they would rather come home and interact with their computers instead of their spouses or girlfriends."

"Like this?"

"Funny, HAL.  But I'm trying to be serious."

"Go ahead."

"Thank you. Dr. Smith (not the Lost in Space Dr. Smith, it's Helen Smith) has found in her work with violent teens that we modern, or should I say post-modern, humans actually tend to dehumanize each other; so much so that a computer that, well, just listens without making - or even has the capacity to make - moral judgements - no offense HAL --"

"None taken."

"-- that computers can actually seem sympathetic by comparison.  And a computer that can both understand human speech and return results in human speech might be more human, than, well, than a human.  I think. Do you know what I mean? And I'm not talking about some disembodied voice telling me where the nearest Pizza Hut is.  Maybe it will be Hakia or Powerset or Cognition or Subjex or Lexxe or AnswerBus or SurfWax... but that day may come."

"That's a lot of, how do you say, "alternative" search engines to keep track of Charles. How do you propose to do it if I'm not here to help you?"

"Well, HAL, it just so happens that I have this list.....

"Good night, Charles."

"Good night, HAL."

I'm preparing an article about "Vocal Search", a.k.a. talking search engines. Ironically just today we heard the news about Google's new Voice Local Search service - an experiment from the Google Labs. While Google's service competes with other 411 services in the US, notably Microsoft's Tellme Networks, in my research of alt search engines I've found a lot of interesting voice services out there. 

Many of the other talking search engines have very innovative UIs. In fact, as usual I find the alt search engines to be superior to Google - but see for yourself... Please take a few minutes and "talk" to these search engines, then come back and vote for the one you think does the best job in the poll below.

Ms Dewey finding results for Web 3.0 (just for our editor...)

Poll

- Ms. Dewey (www.msdewey.com)
 
- Foxy Voxy (www.askvox.com)
 
- Abby (www.abbyme.com)
 
- Speeglebot (http://bot.speegle.co.uk)
 
- Tellme by Voice (http://beta.tellme.com/voice)
 
- Heather (http://www.talkingtoolbar.com) (Free trial)

- Google Voice Local Search (http://labs.google.com/goog411/)

Screenshots

Abby

Foxy Voxy

Ms Dewey

Well, it happened again. Walking through the local Sears store, there right in front of me was the Companion 85 piece Auto Repair Tool Kit! And the price? Also $29.99! What a country! Well, I knew what I had to do. I threw my new Tool Kit in the car and headed back to my home office.

I then dusted off the 55 Piece Mobile Search Tool Kit and neatly arranged 30 more of the latest Mobile Search-Related sites, which I have been collecting for the past six weeks. If Mobile is going to be "the Next Big Thing", you're going to need all the tools you can get in order to be prepared for every eventuality.

The result: the brand new 85 Piece Mobile Search Tool Kit! You will want to bookmark this Tool Kit, put it in your Favorites, print it out, or save the attached Excel spreadsheet to your computer. These 85 websites will come in very handy, if you have anything at all to do with the Mobile Web this year.

This Tool Kit replace the one that you may already have. The 85 pieces here include all of the original 55 pieces, plus 30 new ones - so all you need is right here.

Before we get into it, allow me to back up just a bit. First of all, the "Alternative" in the title refers to "alternatives to Google." That is, one criteria for making it onto the list is to exhibit superiority to Google in one particular feature. For example, TheFind.com is better than Google's Froogle, in my opinion. And that brings me to my second point: the ultimate criteria for inclusion is not empirical, it is subjective. I liken myself to a movie critic - here are 100 movies/search engines that I think you should see. If you go to one and are disappointed, that's okay.

The Top 100 List first appeared in Read/WriteWeb in January 2007. A month later, the Top 100 list was updated - at that point 32 search engines were dropped from the List and 32 new ones debuted. In February we also introduced a 'Search Engine of the Month', a new regular feature (no reading ahead!) of the List. In February I chose GoshMe for this honor. The feedback we received was that categories would be useful, and so this month Categories (I call them "Scattergories" after the old board game of the same name) have been added to the Names and URLs in the attached spreadsheet.

What's New & Category Highlights

This month, there has been 50% less turnover. Only 16 search engines were shown the door. Sad, but absolutely necessary in order to show you 16 of the latest and greatest alternative search engines.

The Top 100 for March ended up with some of these "Scattergories": 

- One Audio Search Engine; FindSounds; 

- Four Blog Search Engines; such as the new Blogdigger; 

- Three Video Search; including PureVideo, which Read/WriteWeb recently reviewed.

- Six Clustering Search Engines; see Quintura or KartOO, two of my favorites. Why so many of these? In part it is because Google is prehistorically one dimensional. That is, when you search on Google, you see the results as a list - a long, long, one-dimensional list of webpages. But we all know intuitively that the World Wide Web is like a globe-shaped spider web; it is three-dimensional, with links between pages everywhere. The Clustering Search Engines are leading the way towards that reality, by making two-dimensional (X-Y) maps of the results.

- Three Continuous Search search engines; this is a new category that I think you'll like. As the name implies, after you conduct your search, the engine keeps chugging along - sending you more results as it finds them. These should be compared to Google Alerts. See the R/WW review of Allth.at.

- Four Filtered Search search engines; take a look at the newcomers fisssh! and Hyper search.

Mobile, Meta, Semantic, Talking Search Engines (not all at once!)

Mobile Search is of course a growing category, but many of these sites will be reviewed in the next update to the 55 Piece Mobile Search Tool Kit. There are many more than 55 tools now and the "Tool Kit" is getting awfully heavy! But pick up your phone and dial (seriously) 1-800-Know-Now, and you can ask one of their "Know-It-Alls" (their term) any question that you want and get a free answer! 

Also Yahoo! recently ramped up their oneSearch Mobile service, so the mobile search space is heating up.

As usual, I probably have too many Meta Search Engines (well into double figures), but each one is very different from the others. I think that if you try them all out, different people will favor different ones - for example look at all the Dogpile fans who keep "hound"ing me. The interesting sounding Agent 55 is a new entrant in this crowded field.

On the cutting edge of search are the Semantic search engines. Hakia is in the Top 100 and you can read all about it here: Hakia Takes on Google with Semantic Technologies. Also one that you simply must see is the sneak demo of CogHog.

One area that deserves (and will get) its own article is the growing phenomenon of talking search engines. The Speeglebot was dropped from the Top 100, because we now have, in addition to Ms. Dewey and "Foxy Voxy" (Ask Vox), a new talking lady - Abby, of AbbyMe. It makes Arthur C. Clarke / Stanley Kubrick's HAL seem so "2001!"

Search Engine of the Month

It's time to introduce March's Search Engine of the Month: KoolTorch. And Kool it is! Don't be surprised if you've never heard of it - it's brand new and it's awesome (just take a gander at the graphics below!) Oh, and don't be surprised that such a new search engine should leap out into the #1 spot for this month; it is the very embodiment of innovation and imagination that I look for in a new alt search engine.

The main thing to notice about KoolTorch is that it's unique, patented design allows you to see 10, 50, even 100 search results all at once - all on one page. I've looked at hundreds of search engines, and I believe this to be a first. And besides being beautiful, it is incredibly functional. Each colored wheel lets you drill down into a category, or you can "mouse over" the bubbles to see a miniature preview of the web page itself! When you mouse over the word in the center oval, you receive still more information - the subcategories below that circle - all without leaving the first page! And be sure to try the eBay search, it is simply genius. You can monitor dozens of auctions, by category, and by the time remaining; again, all in one view.

KoolTorch search

I hope you'll take some time right now and go to www.kooltorch.com and really explore R/WW's Search Engine of the Month. I am confident that you'll be as impressed with it as I was when I first saw it. Congratulations to KoolTorch!

Update: An alert reader pointed out that KoolTorch only works in IE browsers. KoolTorch is working to remedy this problem.

eBay search in KoolTorch

Conclusion

Please don't forget to make the most out of the comment section following this article. It can be used as a "suggestion box" for search engines that you have come across. Sometimes it is used to lament a search engine that was not chosen or was dropped from the list, and that's okay, too. We've even had alt search engine CEOs discuss and defend their projects in the comments section! What ever is on your mind, please share it with us.

See you next month!

Top 100 (sorted by "scattergory")

This list is also available in Excel format.

In February's edition of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines list, there are 32 new search engines (and of course 32 dropped out to accommodate them). You'll find the updated list, in HTML and Excel formats, at the bottom of this article. A lot can happen in a month in the ever-changing world of Search, so accompanying the list is my commentary on the changes during February.

Criteria for inclusion in Top 100

Firstly, let's explain how we developed the list. When we say "The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines," we are referring to alternatives to Google. Many readers wrote in to ask what the criteria was for inclusion on the List, such as: is it the percentage of market share, or some other statistical measure? It is not. The criteria is twofold: 

1) the Search Engine should exhibit superiority to Google - not as a whole, but in just one particular area. People have been talking about Wikipedia's search engine Wikiasari or even digg as potential "Google killers". That's fine, but we are not arguing that any one of the 100 list members is a "Google killer". Rather, that they should be matched against the appropriate corresponding part of Google. For example, TheFind is a shopping search engine and therefore should be compared to Google's shopping search engine, Froogle. blinkx, a video search engine, should be matched against Google's video search feature, and so forth. (See article #1 for a fuller explanation of these categories.) 

2) Secondly, what ultimately gets a particular search engine into the Top 100 (as opposed to the hundreds and hundreds of "also rans") is my evaluation. It is a subjective, personal judgment from an SEO - not an independent, statistical measure. I liken it to a movie critic, who must be ready to defend his/her ratings, but the reader is by no means obligated to agree with them after having seen the movie. 

Finally, there is no ranking within the Top 100, which is why it is displayed alphabetically from A-Z. However, starting this month, one of the 100 will be picked and featured as the "Search Engine of the Month."

Search Engine of the Month

It's time then to announce the first "Search Engine of the Month" for 2007. This award means that the Site will be the first of the Top 10 for 2007 - a permanent honor - and one of only 10 eligible for the #1 position at the end of the year. 

May I have the envelope please...and the winner is...GoshMe! In my opinion, GoshMe is nothing short of amazing. When you go to Google and type in, for example, "coffee," you get 197,000,000 results. When you go to one of the Metasearch engines on the List (Dogpile, mamma, gnosh, PlanetSearch, et al) you still get millions of web Pages, but they are collated from a number of different search engines. GoshMe searches across a variety of specialized search engines and databases, and for the above "coffee" example it returned about 1,200 search engine options - each one of which might have 197,000,000 results! GoshMe results are categorized and have the option to be filtered further. 

GoshMe is not a metasearch engine, but I like to think of it as a Meta-Meta-Search Engine - an entire magnitude of searching above what searchers are used to. If you are prompted to register for the Beta version, go right ahead - it's no big deal. Try a few searches to get the feel of the results. Then, click on the About Us link for a three page summary of how GoshMe works. Here is the brief version:

"Once the user sends us his/her query, we will check all Search Engines possibilities for him/her, and present it in the most comprehensive way, providing a list of all Search Engines and Databases appropriate to his/her query, ranked by relevance, divided by categories and sub-categories, and with a brief description about each Search Engine."

Note that CrossEngine, formerly mrSAPO, also searches across a wide variety of search engines individually - but I prefer the usability and the reach of GoshMe. 

Finally, for the serious students of Search reading this article, scroll all the way down the About Us page and get a copy of the GoshMe white paper (21 .pdf pages) to really get to know what it's all about.

Goshme, our Search Engine of the Month

Tightened definition of 'search engine'

Now back to the rest of the Top 100. Without a doubt, the most persistent comment about the original Top 100 list was that too many of the choices were not bona fide search engines. And while my definition of a search engine may be slightly looser than some, it was in hindsight a bit too loose. Of the 32 sites that were dropped, many were in response to that feedback: e.g. del.icio.us, digg, digg labs swarm, Feeds 2.0, last.fm, and Rollyo. The Updated list comes much closer to meeting the goal of 100 true web search engines; but I'll watch the feedback just in case!

Also some engines, like Singing Fish (which was bought by AOL), just don't exist any more. And there are name changes - mrSAPO (www.mrsapo.com) is now known as CrossEngine - and one accidental omission, Dogpile, which has been restored (thank goodness, because there are a LOT of Dogpile fans out there!).

32 new entrants to the list

On the flip side, many of the 32 names that are new to the list presented features that are clever or fantastic, which merited their inclusion, and the Top 100 cannot be expanded. When a new search engine is added, one must be deleted - it's survival of the fittest, I'm afraid. 

Here's an example: last month Ms. Dewey was in the Top 100 due to its unique User Interface, which demonstrated so well how far we have progressed from Google's white screen. This month, there is a new entrant, ASK VOX, which also has a talking female interface (screenshot below). I wanted both of them to stay, so another one had to be dropped.

Ask Vox, one of the new entrants to the list

New or growing categories: Mobile, Alerts, post-stealth mode search engines

Last month's list had no Mobile search engines, but after my second article on R/WW, The 55 Piece Mobile Search Tool Kit, it was clear that the Top 100 needed some Mobile search engines. So Ask Mobile, Yahoo! Mobile, and Windows Live Mobile were added to this version of the List. Look for greater competition within this category over the rest of the year (and ongoing!).

Another new category is "the search engine that keeps on searching." These engines should be compared to Google Alerts. For example, I have a Google Alert for "Alternative Search Engines", which daily sends any matching results to my Inbox, saving me the trouble of performing a search of my own every day. Now we have some alternatives to Google in this area - please check out Allth.at, Swamii and Searchbots.

Of the search engines that are not "live" yet - such as Dipsie, Mobot, Megaglobe, or Powerset - Hakia was one that went live recently and so was ready to be listed. Each month we will no doubt add more "stealth mode" search engines to the List, as they enter their Beta testing phase.

What's New and Impressive?

Several new search engines just plain impressed me, and I wanted you to see them. You should explore Find Forward, a new metasearch engine; and Pipl, a "search for people" site. 

I also tossed in a couple that I would like you to explore with us: WASAlive and Twerq. Tell us what you think of these.

Plus check out these 'fun' search engines: 

• Searchbots, mentioned above, is almost cartoonish; 
• Gruuve is a "groovy" music recommendation site; 
• Fybersearch is the "parent" site for some interesting variations (be sure to click around);
• I also tossed in a kids search engine, Quintura for kids, for those readers with children (there are several other similar kids search engines).

Summary

Since many search engines are still evolving, it is certainly possible for an "also ran" to move up into the List. Sproose is a good example of a search engine that is constantly adding new features.

And it's important to note that 68 of the original 100 search engines are still firmly in the top 100, either because they have continued to improve (see Zuula), or because they have yet to be challenged (amongst the "Answers" search engines, only ChaCha uses paid guides, not volunteers or "community members"). This block of 68 search engines forms a sort of "core" representation of the new breed of alternative search engines.

The Top 100 Alternative Search Engine List for February 2007

This list is also available in Excel format.

Last week I saw the following ad in Radio Shack for the Kronus 55 Piece Home Repair Tool Set:

Molded case (1) 
Bits (20) 
Bit holder (2) 
Claw hammer (1) 
Level (1) 
Pliers (1) 
Wire stripper (1) 
Long nose pliers (1) 
Utility knife (1) 
Wrench (1) 
Hex keys (sae & metric) (18) 
Hex key holder (1) 
Tape measure (1) 
Ratchet (1) 
Screwdrivers (4)

All for just $29.99!

As I was reaching for my credit card, the thought occurred to me: why not offer a 55 Piece Mobile Search Tool Kit... and not for $29.99, but for free!

The Mobile Search field is going to be "huge", but right now it's growing in fits and starts. So for the early adopters amongst us, a tool kit will come in handy. Here then is my 55 piece tool kit for mobile search:

With this tool kit in hand, you'll be ready to tackle whatever mobile project comes along. It's almost impossible to fit all of these nifty features into any of the hundreds of mobile devices in use right now, so don't be caught without your 55 piece kit!

As usual, we encourage you to tell us about any mobile search application that we missed - here in the comments of Read/WriteWeb.

Ask anyone which search engine they use to find information on the Internet and they will almost certainly reply: "Google." Look a little further, and market research shows that people actually use four main search engines for 99.99% of their searches: Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com (in that order). But in my travels as a Search Engine Optimizer (SEO), I have discovered that in that .01% lies a vast multitude of the most innovative and creative search engines you have never seen. So many, in fact, that I have had to limit my list of the very best ones to a mere 100.

But it's not just the sheer number of them that makes them worthy of attention; each one of these search engines has that standard "About Us" link at the bottom of the homepage. I call it the "why we're better than Google" page. And after reading dozens and dozens of these pages, I have come to the conclusion that, taken as a whole, they are right!

The Search Homepage

In order to address their claims systematically, it helps to group them into categories and then compare them to their Google counterparts. For example, let's look at the first thing that almost everyone sees when they go to search the Internet - the ubiquitous Google homepage. That famously sparse, clean sheet of paper with the colorful Google logo is the most popular Web page in the entire World Wide Web. For millions and millions of Internet users, that Spartan white page IS the Internet.

Google has successfully made their site the front door through which everyone passes in order to access the Internet. But staring at an almost blank sheet of paper has become, well, boring. Take Ms. Dewey for example. While some may object to her sultry demeanor, it's pretty hard to deny that interfacing with her is far more visually appealing than with an inert white screen.

A second example comes from Simply Google. Instead of squeezing through the keyhole in order to reach Google's 37 search options, Simply Google places all of those choices and many, many more all on the very first page; neatly arranged in columns.

Artificial Intelligence

A second arena is sometimes referred to as Natural Language Processing (NLP), or Artificial Intelligence (AI). It is the desire we all have of wanting to ask a search engine questions in everyday sentences, and receive a human-like answer (remember "Good Morning, HAL"?). Many of us remember Ask Jeeves, the famous butler, which was an early attempt in this direction - that unfortunately failed.

Google's approach, Google Answers, was to enlist a cadre of "experts." The concept was that you would pose a question to one of these experts, negotiate a price for an answer, and then pay up when it was found and delivered. It was such a failure, Google had to cancel the whole program. Enter ChaCha. With ChaCha, you can pose any question that you wish, click on the "Search With Guide" button, and a ChaCha Guide appears in a Chat box and dialogues with you until you find what you are looking for. There's no time limit, and no fee.

Clustering Engines

Perhaps Google's most glaring and egregious shortcoming is their insistence on displaying the outcome of a search in an impossibly long, one-dimensional list of results. We all intuitively know that the World Wide Web is just that, a three dimensional (or "3-D") web of interconnected Web pages. Several search engines, known as clustering engines, routinely present their search results on a two-dimensional map that one can navigate through in search of the best answer. Search engines like KartOO and Quintura are excellent examples.

Recommendation Search Engines

Another promising category is the recommendation search engines. While Google essentially helps you to find what you already know (you just can't find it), recommendation engines show you a whole world of things that you didn't even know existed. Check out What to Rent, Music Map, or the stunning Live Plasma display. When you input a favorite movie, book, or artist, they recommend to you a world of titles or similar artists that you may never have heard of, but would most likely enjoy.

Metasearch Engines

Next we come to the metasearch engines. When you perform a search on Google, the results that you get are all from, well, Google! But metasearch engines have been around for years. They allow you to search not only Google, but a variety of other search engines too - in one fell swoop. There are many search engines that can do this, Dogpile, for instance, searches all of the "big four" mentioned above (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask) simultaneously. You could also try Zuula or PlanetSearch - which plows through 16 search engines at a time for you. A very interesting site to watch is GoshMe. Instead of searching an incredible number of Web pages, like conventional search engines, GoshMe searches for search engines (or databases) that each tap into an incredible number of Web pages. As I perceive it, GoshMe is a meta-metasearch engine (still in Beta)!

Other Alt Search Engines

And so it goes, feature after feature after feature. TheFind is a better shopping experience than Google's Froogle, IMHO. Like is a true visual search engine, unlike Google's Images, which just matches your keywords into images that have been tagged with those same keywords. Coming soon is Mobot (see the Demo at www.mobot.com). Google Mobile does let you perform a search on your mobile phone, but check out the Slifter Mobile Demo when you get a chance!

Finally, almost prophetically, Google is silent. Silent! At least Speeglebot talks to you, and Nayio listens! But of course, why should Google worry about these upstarts (all 100 of them)? Aren't they just like flies buzzing around an elephant? Can't Google just ignore them, as their share of the search market continues to creep upwards towards 100%, or perhaps just buy them? Perhaps.

The Last Question

Issac Asimov, the preeminent science fiction writer of our time, once said that his favorite story, by far, was The Last Question. The question, for those who have not read it, is "Can Entropy Be Reversed?" That is, can the ultimate running down of all things, the burning out of all stars (or their collapse) be stopped - or is it hopelessly inevitable?

The question for this age, I submit, is… "Can Google Be Defeated"? Or is Google's mission "to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful" a fait accompli?

Perhaps the place to start is by reading (or re-reading) Asimov's "The Last Question." I won't give it away, but it does suggest The Answer….

Charles Knight is the Principal of Charles Knight SEO, a Search Engine Optimization company in Charlottesville, VA.

The Top 100

For an Excel spreadsheet of the entire Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, go to: http://charlesknightseo.com/list.aspx or email the author at Charles@CharlesKnightSEO.com.

This list is in alphabetical order. Feel free to share this list, but please retain Charles' name and email.

Update: Thanks Sanjeev Narang for providing a hyperlinked version of the list.

Update, 5 February 2007: Charles Knight has left a detailed comment (#94) in response to all the great feedback in the comments to this post. He also notes:

"...while it looks like a very simple, almost crude list of 100 names, it has taken countless hours to try and do it properly and fairly. The list will be updated all year long, and the Top 100 can only get better and better until the Best of 2007 are announced on 12/31/07."

• A9
• AOL
• AURA!
• blinkx
• boing
• bookmach.com
• BOXXET
• ChaCha
• ClipBlast!
• Clusty
• collarity
• CometQ
• CONGOO
• d e c i p h o
• del.icio.us
• digg
• digg labs swarm
• Ditto
• dumbfind
• exalead
• factbites
• fazzle
• FEEDS|2.0
• Feedster
• FindSounds
• GIGABLAST
• girafa
• gnn o d
• GoDefy
• goshme
• GoYams
• grokker
• ICEROCKET
• ixquick
• KartOO
• last.fm
• Lexxealpha
• like
• LiveDeal
• liveplasma
• Local.com
• lurpo
• MetaGlossary
• mnemomap
• Mojeek
• Mooter
• MrSAPO
• MS. DEWEY
• nayio
• Octora
• OiHoi Search
• Pagebull
• PlanetSearch
• pluggd
• PODZINGER
• Previewseek
• pronto.com
• QTsearch
• Quintura
• Releton
• retrevo gamma
• riya
• ROLLYO O
• SearchTheWeb2
• SEEQPOD
• sidekiq
• Simply Google
• Singing FISH
• Slideshow
• Slifter
• soople
• Speegle
• Sphider
• SPURL.net
• S R C H R
• SurfWax
• Swoogle
• TagJag!
• thefind.com
• Trexy
• turboscout
• UJIKO
• url.com
• VMGO.com
• Web 2.0
• Webaroo
• WEBBRAIN
• What to RENT?
• whonu?
• WIKIO
• WiseNut
• Yahoo! MINDSET
• yoono
• yoople
• yubnub
• YuFind
• ZABASEARCH
• zapmeta
• Zippy
• ZUULA