Little search engines that could
Four alternatives to Google for finding answers online.
By Chris Gaylord | Staff Writer for The Christian Science Monitor/ May 7, 2009 edition
Rich Clabaugh/Staff
All hail Google, the undisputed king of search. It’s hard to imagine other sites toppling the online giant – and few have the hubris to try.
Jimmy Wales, the mind behind Wikipedia, announced in late March that he was pulling the plug on Wikia Search, his attempt at a user-generated search engine. The project couldn’t attract enough users and money.
But Google isn’t perfect. While some call it simple, quick, and effective, others describe the site as incomplete, dull, and a lowest common denominator.
Here are four search alternatives to cut through the Web and find what you’re looking for.
Viewzi: Search with a cherry on top. If Google is the vanilla ice cream of search engines, Viewzi is the row of colorful toppings. The site relies on Google’s computers to serve up good responses, but then sprinkles in some graphical flavor to sweeten the whole package. Viewzi offers more than a dozen ways to sift through search results – from timelines and screen shots to cross references and (our favorite) photo tag cloud.
Mahalo: Human-powered search. Mahalo is half Web directory, half über-search engine. Its team pulls together information, videos, and links on thousands of topics. If they haven’t gotten to your query yet, then Mahalo delivers search results from Google, Yahoo, Ask, and five other major sites. You’ll find the answer one way or another.
ChaCha: Search on the go. While most of these services are computer-bound, ChaCha is built for cellphones. Call 1-800-2CHACHA and leave a message with your question. You can also text the question to 242242 (ChaCha). Two minutes later – “ding” – your answer is ready. A friendly and free response pops up on your phone as a text message. These replies come from ChaCha’s speedy team of paid searchers, who do the online hunt for you. Their paychecks come from the short ads at the bottom of your answer.
Powerset: The future of search. This young entrant, scooped up last year by Microsoft, actually reads what you write. While most search engines only care about keywords, Powerset stands as an early example of “semantic search” – or teaching computers to understand natural language. It cares about the words in between the nouns. And, like ChaCha, Powerset wants to find an answer, instead of a list of links that might find you the answer. After parsing your question, it sniffs out details from Wikipedia. Warning to searchers: consider the source. Wikipedia entries are incomplete, possibly inaccurate, and focus more on whos and whats than whens and whys. With Microsoft’s help, Powerset hopes to refine the algorithm and expand its sources, maybe one day allowing the site to search the entire Web.
Also in the news: Wolfram Alpha.
( More stories )
Comments
2. Gregory Kohs | 05.07.09
Jimmy Wales = “the mind behind Wikipedia”?
That’s pretty far from the truth. It was actually more the idea of Dr. Larry Sanger, and his mind doing most of the heavy lifting for the first 6 months, then Jimmy giving him the boot, then slowly taking credit for the provenance of the project.
Pretty sad story, and you do us no favors by playing into Jimbo’s sham.
3. Candace McCall | 05.08.09
Another search engine to try is http://www.cuil.com
From their web page on privacy:
“Privacy is a hot topic these days, and we want you to feel totally comfortable using our service. Because Cuil analyzes Web pages and not click-throughs, we don’t need to know your search history and habits. So our privacy policy is very simple: when you search with Cuil, we do not collect any personally identifiable information, period. We have no idea who sends queries: not by name, not by IP address, and not by cookie. Your search history is your business, not ours. We don’t need to keep logs of our users’ search activity, so we don’t. For further details, read our Privacy Policy. Don’t worry, it’s short and to the point. No legal mumbo-jumbo.”
4. Nikola | 05.08.09
Google is still darn useful, but if you’re worried about privacy try this. For a Google search without Google being able to track you, try Scroogle:
http://www.scroogle.org/
It also lets you encrypt your search terms.
5. LowlyWise | 05.08.09
And how about Clusty?
This is a Google clone which “clusters” the search results, providing a list of broad categories down the left hand side of the screen and a Google-style list of specific sites with synopsis of content on the right. Its makers, Vivisimo, used to call it “Vivisimo,” Italian for “let’s live” which is IMO a much nicer name. “Clusty” tries to put a nick-name type of moniker on its general search engine (and fails because it rhymes with “disgust”) and reserves “Vivisimo” for its business search. Clusty is free, Vivisimo is paid. Neither one is cluttered up with ads like Google, and that is refreshing.
Both of these, in fact all the popular search engines, use Overture for the real search. Have you ever heard of it? If yes, you are of the web elite. And since we don’t like elitists, we will continue to be monitored by Overture and our preferences recorded and appropriated by spammers.
I recently received a message from myself advertising illegal pharmaceuticals. It looked as if those web bodysnatchers had been at work, and since I had a lot of discussion lists and newsletters coming in to that account, I resubscribed them to my Gmail account. There had never been any spam in that account, and almost immediately some of the same spammers followed the resubscribed newsletters to my Gmail. What can we do to these parasites that would be the equivalent of a high-level vermicide that you’d give to a horse?
Thanks for the link to Cuil. Kool!
6. CER | 05.08.09
Nadya,
Are you sure you want search engines? Perhaps the databases that Google doesn’t yet reach might be more what you are looking for, if its for school.
7. Silvia Wilson, in Korea | 05.09.09
I like http://www.dogpile.com It uses other engines in a hierarchy, gives me what I want and provides the sidebar with other options, also. Plus, using Dogpile helps get funds to animal shelters. My computer professor recommended it in 1999, and I’ve never felt the need to change.
10. Robert | 05.13.09
Thank you Gregory for enlightening the readers, as most of us probably did not not know that. In most business enterprises, wars or cultures, its typically the sly that tend to steal the glory away from those who might actually deserve it. Of course the irony here is to witness a site intended to be a great equalizer of information itself mired in such things.
11. Cecilia | 05.19.09
It’s great that there are companies willing to develop search engines. The DeepWeb is a great place to search for resources. However, if you have a specific subject area you need to research visiting a public or academic library either in person or online could save you a lot of time. There you would find databases available on your topic and could also confer with a librarian. Many public and academic libraries also offer Chat/IM services.
12. Anne | 05.22.09
Does ‘dogpile’ have religious/ christian backing?
It seems to come back with far too many ads and religious returns for my liking.
I want my search engine to be a neutral as possible.
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1. Nadya Daniela | 05.07.09
It’s nice to hear about some alternatives to Google!
I often have to run searches for school, and it’s frustrating because I don’t want the most popular page, I want the most *useful* page (perhaps the page most popular among engineers…?), and I don’t know how to search for that effectively… I will try these engines!