Oh great magic google machine, i still love you - sorta
I am going to tell you a secret. Google is not the “be all to end all”. See, I said it and didn’t get struck down by lightening. There are actually a whole lot of search engines out there.
There is Bing, Microsoft’s version, which still does the majority of yahoo’s searches (not all anymore, but used to) and is the second largest one in North America. I am not a fan, it’s like wandering through the world’s biggest K-Mart “well, you do have a lot of stuff, just nothing I am looking for”. You still won’t find much difference in ranking for most sites and responses in either though, page 2 on Bing is most likely page 2 on Yahoo.
There is “Ask”, not bad, but some really random results sometimes. There is wow, webcrawler, mywebsearch, inforspace, info, contenko, dogpile, alhea, ixquick and even aol still exists. If you add up their numbers as of March of this year that’s 678,500,000 and if you toss in the other 650,000,000 from Bing & Yahoo that’s over the visitors on Google. That’s just North America. There are some that call themselves search engines – they are really just directories, and there are some that are just “unique”. Wolframalpha is not going to help promote your business for example, but is waaaayy too much fun to play on if you are as nerdy as I am. It’s all facts and data and math heaven.
DuckDuckGo is just flat out awesome, no pushy presumptuous responses, or pages flooded with ads. You not only don’t have to do cartwheels to get ranked with them – you can’t. You cannot buy ranking with DuckDuckGo
I didn’t see numbers for this year but in March of last year they had over 250 million searches. One of the reasons this engine is getting so popular is the very thing it does differently than google. It does not track anything. Each search is a clean slate, no assumptions or presumptions, simply relevant results. I admit there are times that I like how the magic google machine knows what I am looking for, it can be handy. I also get creeped right out when I search at work for gauge tables, or railway patterns and then at home on a different ip address, logged in a different account, and in a different county – these results show up immediately again. I am not the only one that raises an eyebrow at such things and with cyber security evolving at the rate it is having a search engine go all “big brother” on you can give the feeling of a layer of vulnerability that I don’t think everyone is going to be comfortable with forevermore.
Google’s interpretation of being intuitive can also be a royal pain. Yes, I know I shop online – but that certainly doesn’t mean that I should have to scroll through two pages of ebay and amazon ads to get to the wiki on everything either.
Another of my new favorites is Yandex. Yes, you can index your site on it – it takes one click. Whaaaat? Not open this, copy that, insert it here and if you hold your pinky just right it will work on the third time (maybe)? Nope, click – done. Posts only, not pages, but still – geeeesh google, did you take notes on that?
OK, it’s not exactly local, there is an office in ‘Frisco – or at least Bay area, and I think the one in China is open now too, but it is . Maps and automatic translate, all the bells and whistles of *they that can’t be named*they have the whole range of services, images, metrics, email, music - they do have an English only and I bounced back and forth using the auto translate, they aren’t very different, some search result variations.
They aren’t really new, just different. They are actually a year older than *you know who* just on the other side of the pond for the most part. They don’t use keywords anymore either, it’s more of an AI structure – I really think *those other guys* are going to be heading in that direction soon as well though – just my thoughts on it. Here is an excerpt from an old article I found that sort of sums it up a bit better than I can.
East-West Digital News 2011
Andrey Zotov:
“If Yandex can offer a search engine on the global market that incorporates today’s most advanced artificial intelligence – an algorithm capable of reducing the useless millions of results found in half a second to a more manageable number of worthwhile links – this will be an important success.”
Yandex made substantial improvements in regional search parameters to show different, more relevant results for users in different cities,” Volozh added. “While international search engines differentiate countries, we focus different cities. Our main breakthrough, however, came in December, 2009, when we integrated the Matrixnet search platform which allows Yandex to analyze not just hundreds, but thousands of factors. It’s like a new telescope for astronomers, delivering a resolution several times higher than the one of competing analogues.”
So, I like DuckDuckGo and Yandex because out of the oodles of the others out there they just seemed to suit me the best.
So my question is, if I have been searching for a new search engine, how many others do you think are too? Sure, for now, the magic google machine will have the lion’s share of searches – I am not even suggesting they get dethroned, but a “be all to end all” – nope. Not even close. Just one really big fish in a very, very big pond.
Recent Comments
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oh good call, i had forgotten about that one, i like it :) my bad for completely forgetting a nice option :) good catch, yes this is a good one too, crisp, clean and easy
thank you for so many useful information. to be honest only about ask,and another 2 . but i will try some of them :))good to know
All of these are strange to me, how do I install Yandex and DuckDuckgo? want to try these search engines. Thanks for sharing.
duckduckgo you don't have to install, its just click and go - love that. yandex has two options, you will want the dot com if you want only english results but the other one has an instant translate if you prefer :)
That was an awesome post Lori. Thank you for sharing your insights. There was a time when folks thought the earth was flat until some one sailed around the world.
learn from the past and eyes on the future :) you are so right, just because something was once thought doesn't make it so, hmmm...that would make a great blog - thanks bud!! :)
HI, thanks for this post. I have not heard of duckduckgo before and just had a look at it. I get two first and second page rankings here. Will have to check out the other ones.
cheers
James
that's awesome, don't you think? duckduckgo is so simplified, no ads, no fuss or mess, just simple search results, so clean, i love it :)
Thanks for this, Lori! I just checked out Duck Duck Go. When I searched for "animated whiteboards, Philadelphia" my site is listed in the first two spots below a paid ad by someone else. Didn't cost me anything.AND my "Pain in the Butt Fundraiser" video shows up second from the left at the very top.
Don't forget, though... Google owns Youtube, Google +, Google Docs, Google Hangs, etc. It's like an entire business office suite, so getting people to leave would be tough. A lot of of businesses buiid their whole world around their features.
yes, and i get that. it is just nice to know that there are other options. i love google docs, brilliant concept and i use it a lot. i will still, as i imagine most people here (north america), use some google. i like knowing that its not the only kid on the block, and i liked meeting some of the other kids, google may not reign forever so its good to know what alternatives are coming - and thriving- but unless i am shopping, its not my search engine anymore. do i care if i rank in it, yeah - will it stress me - nope :)
Truth be told, my agenda is to drive traffic to my site (when it's a bit more filled out) using live broadcasting platforms like Periscope and Blab. There are people doing it now who no longer rely on standard SEO methods at all.
seo will have to go the way of the dinosaur if google also accepts the ai - and they are experimenting with it to the point that it may be more inevitable than we susspect
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Diversity and competition create balance, even by search engines, I would think. No, a monopoly would never be productive in the long run....
Thanks for this very informative post, Lori!