Netscape, back in the day was the front end to the top 5 search engines
and we distributed search queries in a round robin unless people put a
preference in their settings. We had some glue that let us know how
fast people went to an end site so we could rate the search engines
internally.. (hedging our bets and power in the negotiations with the
engines)... The interesting thing was the simpler the search engine
interface the more it got hit. Google is slowly getting worse and
worse on the front page. Yeah it's valuable, the top page, but Yahoo
went down the rat hole faster and faster as the front page got trashed.
IF you go to google now on a slow link it just plain dies because of
all the hidden sh.t... KISS was the most important thing back then and
I would venture that it is now. What is disappointing is that the
search engines aren't really getting any more intelligent. Google made
so much progress because they could "sell" search results and monetize
what was not monetized before. The actual results for finding
something not obvious is still garbage... Natural Language searches are
still infantile... There is a lot of room for improvement in getting a
better search language.
On 10/27/2016 03:36 PM, Travis Johnson wrote:
About 5+ years ago, I had a friend that built a search engine front end.
You would input your search, and it would query Google, Yahoo, MSN and a
few others, and then based on the results from all of them, rank the
results you would see based on how the other engines saw the world. It
was very fast and actually produced some amazing results.
He never did anything with it, and I'm pretty sure it has since died a
slow death. Google has the majority of searches now because everyone
knows the name, everyone references it (even on TV shows, movies,
etc)... and it's a unique name that everyone remembers. It's also easy
to type on a keyboard. LOL
Travis
On 10/27/2016 4:26 PM, Paul Stewart wrote:
Interesting and thanks…
Have you ever tried Gigablast for example? (www.gigablast.com
<http://www.gigablast.com>) It’s a great example in my opinion of an
“alternative” search engine that typically provides good results … I
also find that DuckDuckGo (www.duckduckgo.com
<http://www.duckduckgo.com>) providers better results on searches than
Google.
The challenge is that everyone is so used to Google whether it’s
actually better or not - it’s the benchmark to beat sometimes…..
Thanks again,
Paul
On Oct 27, 2016, at 6:13 PM, Simon Westlake <simon@sonar.software
<mailto:simon@sonar.software>> wrote:
The only way I would use something else would be if it offered me
something beyond what Google does. I've tried others, and the search
results are often inferior, or the same, which doesn't leave me with
much reason to use anything other than Google.
I'd happily use a better product if it was offered, but I think
that's probably a tall order.
On 10/27/2016 4:07 PM, Paul Stewart wrote:
Hey folks… I’ve been trying to figure out lately where to ask this question ….
I have a long time hobby of working around search engines … actually building
them, coding them, scaling them etc…. various open source, homebuilt, and
commercial offerings I’ve used….
This is probably 20 years I’ve been “dabbling” in this space and seen a huge
change in how search engines are perceived, utilized etc….
My question that I’m looking for feedback on, knowing that this group is
extremely good at feedback is this:
When you use a search engine, do you ever think of using something other than
Google? (ie. Bing, Duckduckgo)
Do you feel a search engine that is country specific is something that you
would go out of your way to use … or just use whatever is in your browser and
don’t care?
Is privacy of what you search for on a search engine of concern at all?
thanks - this helps me a great deal …
I’m considering launching a project involving a search engine and challenged
with what it’s primary focus should be …. :)
Cheers,
Paul
--
Simon Westlake
Skype: Simon_Sonar
Email:simon@sonar.software
Phone: (702) 447-1247
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