Any Good Alternatives to Google?
I’m looking for an alternative to Google to use in my Web browsers. Any suggestions? It doesn’t have to be a particularly popular engine either, as long as the design is clean, the sites are quick, and the results good enough.
Google’s results tend to be getting worse by the month and their constant waves of re-ranking are becoming tiring (especially when it seems to be valid sites rather than spam and splogs getting punished). I’m not the only one.. many people on WebmasterWorld are howling for Google’s blood. I personally feel Google can do whatever they want, but I want to find an alternative until they improve their search engine and stop resting on their laurels. It’s almost enough to drive me into creating a search startup 
It’s also good to have an alternative so that you don’t become reliant on Google. I think a lot of us have nowadays, and that’s unhealthy for the industry. While Google isn’t, technically, a monopoly, it certainly has a form of ‘cultural’ monopoly over the Internet.. everyone assumes you’ll use Google to search for something, and “Google” has become a verb. We need alternatives, even if we continue to use Google for the areas where it shines (its blog search engine, for example, is far better than Technorati’s).
(Update: In my investigations, I’ve found Yahoo to probably be the best results-wise so far but a poor design.. Icerocket has poor results but they have a great design.. MSN is okay results, okay design.. shall keep looking 
)
December 19th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
I too am a bit wary of the Google monopoly on search (even though I’m a total Google fanboy it other ways). I too find Yahoo to be an acceptable alternative.
Another thing that got me worried about over dependence on Google was my experience with setting up a website using Google Apps for your Domain(a consequence of my fanboy state!!).
I had set-up the bones of the website several months ago, just name telephone number, basic details about the business, it duly appeared on Google’s and Yahoo’s engines. Last month I spent a lot of time fleshing out the web site prior to the launch of the associated business only to find that Google was now applying a non removable ROBOTS.TXT file on Google Apps domains preventing all search engines (including Google’s) from indexing the site - the site disappered from the web.
Where the logic in this is, I’m not sure? Lots of talk on forums about it, but no explanation from Google. I’m lucky, I could just lift the pages, transfer them to another server and change the DNS entries, pity those with no technical skill who depend on Google Apps.
Tom
December 19th, 2006 at 7:15 pm
You could try http://www.mamma.com I suppose.
December 19th, 2006 at 7:21 pm
Peter, have you tried http://www.alltheweb.com/? Yep it’s owned by Yahoo and is supposed to use it’s database but seems to present differently. Not that bad interface either..
December 19th, 2006 at 7:23 pm
Bill: The results from Mamma are pretty good actually.. and they reminded me of another search engine, GigaSearch. GigaSearch has a really nice layout and good results.. but.. their results seem a little lagged / old, which is a shame.
Tom: Can you give me a link to discussion about that issue? I tried looking but didn’t come up with anything. Sounds like a nightmare!
December 19th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
AllTheWeb seems to have pretty good results, something about the way the text is crushed up on the results page annoys me, but nothing major
Not bad! The one thing that bugs me about their results is they seem very heavily swayed by words in domain names.
December 19th, 2006 at 7:29 pm
Thanks for all the results so far guys, this is great research
December 19th, 2006 at 8:00 pm
try dogpile.com it sounds like a pile of dog shit but its actually quite good.
December 19th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
I’d also suggest setting up something to let you compare them side by side. I’ve got a search box at the top of http://www.myownsite.us that allows you to do just that.
December 19th, 2006 at 10:30 pm
“It’s almost enough to drive me into creating a search startup.”
Go on. I dare you. I’ll even help you!
December 19th, 2006 at 11:01 pm
Google’s results tend to be getting worse by the month
Couldn’t agree more. I too have been getting totally fed up with Google recently - as have several of my clients. The relatively new method of ‘punishing’ UK-based websites (and every other non-US country locale?) that use a dotcom domain, when restricting results to ‘UK only’ is getting very tiresome. The effect seems to be worsened if the site is hosted overseas.
E.g. I have a client whose main domain is xxx.com. Their xxx.co.uk address points to xxx.com and their site is hosted in the USA for economic reasons, (it’s cheaper!). Their keywords do well on google.co.uk, but restrict those results to ‘UK only’ and they drop off the map. My clients cannot afford to run two (or more) country-specific websites in order to pander to a search engine. These in any case would have to contain sufficiently distinct content/layout so as not to be seen to be spamming the engine). However, they *are* reliant (perhaps too much so), in a big way on the results that Google (specifically) returns. When combined with the current woes at DMOZ (don’t even start me up on that one!), the life of a tadpole web-designer feels particularly stressful.
Google definitely seems to be getting too big for it’s boots and needs a good kick up the backside - before they turn into Microsoft, and forget that there is a public out there who use their products and make them what they are.
There are more and more moans daily about Google. When small businesses, (who put a lot of money into the adwords programs [sic] that are so important to Google), start to suffer as a direct result of their placement policies, then hopefully the giant will start to feel it from the ground up, and do something about it before it gets toppled. The bigger they are….
As for your original poser - I too believe that Yahoo is the best alternative right now. I am sure that something good is around the corner though. It could be tiny? There’s just something in the air…
December 20th, 2006 at 12:00 am
http://del.icio.us/popular/ gets me focussed results of fantastic quality and is remarkably versatile these days.
December 20th, 2006 at 12:05 am
Yeah, I use http://del.icio.us/ quite a lot for searches now, particularly if I can guess the tag that might be used. Even things like, say, http://del.icio.us/tag/ruby+tutorial work out really well usually. del.icio.us tag intersections used to be really slow, but they’re usable now.
I’m now envisioning a search engine where people vote for the sources (or one that, perhaps, uses existing sources of good links, such as del.icio.us and Digg).
December 20th, 2006 at 12:24 am
Peter,
Yes indeed the web is very quiet on this issue, but then if you think about it, the market for Google Apps is not the internet-cognoscenti but the small business folks looking for a cheap reliable DIY website and mail hosting service. Robots.txt are not a topic of conversation in the local chambers of commerce.
For examples of the discussion, such as it is …
http://groups.google.com/group/GPC-How-to-Advanced/browse_thread/thread/777fbfad278755a4/406c7a8f487c7863?lnk=gst&q=robots.txt&rnum=1#406c7a8f487c7863
http://groups.google.com/group/GPC-Suggestions/browse_thread/thread/bc9bc09dd063989c/d005e3fc0bc45aec?lnk=gst&q=robots.txt&rnum=2#d005e3fc0bc45aec
http://gfour-net.blogspot.com/2006/12/google-pages-killer-robots.html
To see an example of the the robots file..
http://apps.gleesonit.com/robots.txt
Tom
December 20th, 2006 at 1:12 am
I just e-mailed my contact at Google about it and after a little bit of back and forth he e-mailed the project manager for Google Page Creator and told me this:
So.. that’s the sort-of official response
It’s a bug.
December 20th, 2006 at 5:57 am
Recommend you try www.turboscout.com which provides easy access to multiple search engines without tr-typing the search item.
December 20th, 2006 at 12:30 pm
Thanks for that Peter,
Well thanks be it’s a bug and not a deliberate policy!
Tom
December 20th, 2006 at 12:43 pm
I’ve just noticed, that the link http://apps.gleesonit.com/robots.txt now returns a balnk file, that was quick. Of course now that my Google Apps hosted “apps” sub-domain is searchable and it’s a duplicate of my recently moved “www” sub-domain, I’ll probably end-up penalised for duplicate content
Thanks again
Tom
December 20th, 2006 at 2:53 pm
[…] Where’s the logic in this ? As it turns out none, it’s a bug, well it may be a bug as a comment I left on Peter Coopers blog prompted him to email a contact he had within Google, who contacted somebody else within Google, who confirmed it was a bug. Makes you worry about handing over too much of your infrastructure to “faceless companies”. Who do you call, or email? Where are the bug databases? Questions on the support forum, remained unanswered. I guess we can always ask guys like Peter Cooper, thanks again Peter. […]