Is there any good alternative to Google?

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Not that I hate Google or anything, but the total domination it has can't be a good thing in the long run (see: Windows). And you may well want another search method at times anyway. I know vaguely how Google works (ranking in terms of no. of web pages pointing to url) and I can see that turning up the most popular web pages will often do the trick but not always, surely. There must be other maybe more specialised means of searching which could be more effective for certain types of searches.

― jgwr, Tuesday, 19 October 2004 11:48 (twenty-one years ago)

The google backlash starts here!

Actually I still think Google is pretty good. Some of their ideas have forced their competitors to improve their sites as well, such as the google toolbar, e-mail providers now having to provide more space etc. Yahoo search was pretty crap when google came along.

― jellybean (jellybean), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 11:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Also Google is going to increasingly have the same kind of problems that Windows/Explorer has, ie it is the dominant player, so it attracts all the hackers etc. Likewise, it's Google that attracts the people who want to manipulate results, and as quickly as Google finds ways to stop them, people will find new, ever cleverer ways of fiddling the system.

― jgwr, Tuesday, 19 October 2004 12:01 (twenty-one years ago)

kartOO

― Ste (Fuzzy), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 12:09 (twenty-one years ago)

http://vivisimo.com is ok - it clusters responses under headings so you can sort through the results a bit more easily. It doesn't replace Google for me though.

― beanz (beanz), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 12:12 (twenty-one years ago)

Haven't used it a great deal, but Microsoft are spending a lot of money on this:

http://beta.search.msn.com/

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 12:14 (twenty-one years ago)

I typed the name of my band into that msn search engine, and ghot a couple of hits that google doesn't bring up. I typed in "realdoll" and one of the first few hits was a site explainging how to prepare and use a coffee enema (!)

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 12:20 (twenty-one years ago)

alltheweb.com is OK

See new search engine

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 12:28 (twenty-one years ago)

The new msn search sux0r. Microsoft really threw their money away on that one.

― Leon Czolgosz in NYC (Nicole), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 12:34 (twenty-one years ago)

The new Yahoo! one is good though, esp. the news search.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 12:37 (twenty-one years ago)

Ew, is it? I have always refused to use Yahoo! based on how ridiculous and cheesy they seem.

― Leon Czolgosz in NYC (Nicole), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 12:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Yeah, I know. Try it though.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 12:42 (twenty-one years ago)

Anything with ".msn.com" in its URL seems to fail. Even Slate magazine changed its URL back to just slate.com. Microsoft doesn't get that people don't want a mini-internet within the internet.

― Hurting (Hurting), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 12:43 (twenty-one years ago)

alltheweb is my second choice after google.

― Ste (Fuzzy), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 12:44 (twenty-one years ago)

me too.

― k3rry (dymaxia), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 12:59 (twenty-one years ago)

About this coffee enema...

While not perfect, I find that google advanced searches are actually pretty darn handy for most of my specific needs.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 13:10 (twenty-one years ago)

I can't understand someone using MSN search because they're afraid of Google becoming too dominant.

― o. nate (onate), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 13:44 (twenty-one years ago)

Do any of these other search engines do arithmetic or convert between Imperial and metric like Google?

― Michael Jones (MichaelJ), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 13:51 (twenty-one years ago)

No, but some of them dance a jig.

― Alba (Alba), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 14:01 (twenty-one years ago)

I can't understand someone using MSN search because they're afraid of Google becoming too dominant.

Yeah, that seems pretty bizarre to me as well.

― Pashmina (Pashmina), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 18:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I certainly wouldn't object to Google competition, but at present? All other engines are but pimples on Google's sweet ass.

There are any number of options (straight from Google's labs) as well as "advanced operators" that will allows one to narrow the scope of one's search.

More often than not, I'm anti-monopoly. But having worked in the search department of one of the formerly Top 5 portals as well as one of the more effective and ethical search engine marketing firms, well, at the former we wanted to be Google (after we wanted to be Yahoo! [of course]) and at the latter no other engine got more 'spect in re: either its front- or back-end.

― nader (nader), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 19:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Why don't you ask Jeeves?

Q: Is there a good alternative to Google?

Jeeves' answer:

Hemp a good alternative crop
Farmers looking for a good alternative crop to add to their rotation, industrial hemp might be the answer. But you might have to wait for a while...
www.globalhemp.com/News/2001/January/hemp_a_good_alternative.shtm...

― andy, Tuesday, 19 October 2004 20:10 (twenty-one years ago)

fact: alltheweb now uses the yahoo search database. I recommend:

Yahoo Search
http://search.yahoo.com/

also check new developments at
Yahoo Search Blog
http://www.ysearchblog.com/

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 20:18 (twenty-one years ago)

I can still remember a guy in 1997 telling me how he was investing $10K into askjeeves.com. His point was that common folk were more comfortable with "asking questions" rather than by inserting internet queries through keywords. I still stand by my statement that I made then that the "common folks" would have a hard time forming a complete sentence.

― Pleasant Plains (Pleasant Plains), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 20:20 (twenty-one years ago)

liking http://www.dogpile.com/

― (Jon L), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 20:23 (twenty-one years ago)

best metasearch: ez2Find http://www.ez2find.com/

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Tuesday, 19 October 2004 20:27 (twenty-one years ago)

There's always Amazon's www.a9.com

not that i use it or anything

― Japanese Giraffe (Japanese Giraffe), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 11:58 (twenty-one years ago)

After all, it is just google under a different name.

― Japanese Giraffe (Japanese Giraffe), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 11:58 (twenty-one years ago)

http://www.snap.com
http://www.clusty.com

― James Mitchell (James Mitchell), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 12:05 (twenty-one years ago)

but the total domination it has can't be a good thing in the long run (see: Windows).

Hold on a second there. I got no problem with the question but Windows was never a good product regardless of the length of the run and DOS was legaly questionable bit of work from the get go.

― Mr Noodles (Mr Noodles), Wednesday, 20 October 2004 13:01 (twenty-one years ago)

seven months pass...

Is Google down for other people? I get nothin'

― Sociah T Azzahole (blueski), Sunday, 12 June 2005 08:45 (twenty years ago)

Google.fi is still working for me.

― Tuomas (Tuomas), Sunday, 12 June 2005 08:50 (twenty years ago)

Works fine for me.

― jel -- (jel), Sunday, 12 June 2005 08:50 (twenty years ago)

Back now. That was odd. Also yesterday I was getting pop-up windows saying the gmail domain could not be certified and an option to select whether to allow the site to load or to block it. Bizarre.

― Sociah T Azzahole (blueski), Sunday, 12 June 2005 09:20 (twenty years ago)

will microsoft try to copyright the word "search" then??

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Sunday, 12 June 2005 16:54 (twenty years ago)

Ask Jeeves is garbage.

― Cool Hand Luuke (ex machina), Sunday, 12 June 2005 17:07 (twenty years ago)

If you want to search up-to-date news and weblog stuff, Technorati is the best there is.

― James Mitchell (James Mitchell), Sunday, 12 June 2005 17:16 (twenty years ago)

If you only care about Doogie Howser, M.D., Dooogle is tops.

― Rhodia (Rhodia), Sunday, 12 June 2005 17:57 (twenty years ago)

http://www.icerocket.com/ - Mark Cuban's search engine enterprise.

― milozauckerman (miloaukerman), Sunday, 12 June 2005 18:40 (twenty years ago)

I like the idea of www.ipl.org , but I can't always find everthing I want there.

― A Nairn (moretap), Sunday, 12 June 2005 18:50 (twenty years ago)

eleven months pass...

I am impressed with the newly launched Ask.com Blogs & Feeds/ Bloglines search

Bloglines - Search
http://www.bloglines.com/search

Bloglines - Advanced Search
http://www.bloglines.com/advsearch

- fast
- fresh content
- spam free / relevance
- extra features
- quality User Interface

Same index / different interface also available @

Ask.com
http://www.ask.com/?o=312
search engine for Blogs/ Feeds

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Friday, 2 June 2006 09:17 (nineteen years ago)

four months pass...

the best metasearch engine, clusty gets a makeover

clusty
http://clusty.com/

http://clusty.com/fresh

With the new design, we had the following goals:

* Improve the speed
* Make the interface cleaner and simpler (useit.com)
* Highlight the clusters

― DJ Martian (djmartian), Monday, 2 October 2006 18:25 (nineteen years ago)

seventeen years pass...

Going to bring discussion of Kagi here. I'm tempted

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 25 May 2024 10:44 (one year ago)

I posted this a few weeks back at my experience with how utterly shitty google's results were, how everything on the second page and beyond was either blank or unrelated sales-driven results:

vanilla search is so broken in mid-2024, feels like this is google's "00s MTV"-era (ie music television channel showing nothing but teen reality/game shows).
― citation needed (Steve Shasta), Tuesday, April 30, 2024 10:19 AM (three weeks ago)

― Mrs. Ippei (Steve Shasta), Saturday, 25 May 2024 14:21 (one year ago)

Does One Line Fix Google?

― Kim Kimberly, Saturday, 25 May 2024 14:48 (one year ago)

I saw that but the problem is that what remains after you've cleared the "junk" is also junk

― Humanitarian Pause (Tracer Hand), Saturday, 25 May 2024 15:04 (one year ago)

Forgot to mention my initial post was after I googled my sister in law's zipcode using her city/state as search terms (need to send her a bday card) and there on the first page of results was a Quora (which is supposed to be questions or at least used to be?) post declaring why "we" need to vote for Donald Trump. Let me see if i can recreate it...

― Mrs. Ippei (Steve Shasta), Saturday, 25 May 2024 19:33 (one year ago)

...and there it is, 5th result down on a simple search for a "[x city] [y state] zipcode":

https://i.imgur.com/kK1q5wd.png

― Mrs. Ippei (Steve Shasta), Saturday, 25 May 2024 19:37 (one year ago)

Libraries are due a revival.

― xyzzzz__, Saturday, 25 May 2024 21:48 (one year ago)

Libraries are being closed in NYC and Seattle to divert funds to cops.

― bae (sic), Sunday, 26 May 2024 00:14 (one year ago)

(opening hours and staff reduced)

― bae (sic), Sunday, 26 May 2024 00:14 (one year ago)

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