Search is the second most important activity on the internet after email, but I need to attack your beloved ego: Do you know how to search?
Boy, I tell you, searching is so much more than just going to Bing or Googlr, inserting some queries and then hitting ENTER. This is searching for beginners that are using search for the first time and that are still impressed by it’s index size and it’s power to deliver fast results. Trust me, internet search is much more than Bing or Google’s boxes. It’s a new world you need to explore very carefully. Why? Because the same word can have many different meanings. If you search for article, you might want to know how to write one, or software to help you with suggestions, or maybe sites to publish article or maybe even articles you just want to read. A search engine can read queries but not minds… at least yet. For example, Google has all your history, all the searches you made, all the sites you accessed if you have their toolbar installed and all your preferences to target future queries to your preferences. Do not ask me how this works in detail, it’s a Google secret. But Google still shows many business websites with no informative value in the first results page and even in first place! Also for some other keywords, Google has so much duplicated content… or link farms or blank pages… Too bad the Big G is still in the Alpha state, yes, it’s even before BETA… Bing on the other hand gives you more accurate website with almost no duplicated content, but they also show you sites in Chinese and Arabian language… Bing still has a long way to go and needs a bigger index too. Which one is the best? For me it’s Bing. Yahoo in some rare ocasions has good points. Which one should you use? All at the same time. Some search engines are able to search all these three engines at the same time and mix all the results in a single page. This way you are ensured you are searching a bigger web than with just one engine and the other two might correct some quality flaws the one you used to use has.
Which search engines are able to search all the three big ones? Blind Search, All The Web, Dog Pile to name just a few.
There are some alternative search engines you want to try. Cuil, Alta Vista, Ask they are all good ones. Ask gives you nice suggestions so you can expand and enhance your search experience.
Besides good results what makes a search engine good? An eye pleasure search engine. You do not want something that will just drive your retines crazy do you? Yeah, me neither. Google has a great interface and so does Ask has. Cuil is the worst one in this feature. Search extension or expansion is the next most important feature in my personal opinion. Sometimes you do not know exactly what you are looking for, so these search suggestions will tell you what to search next. Ask and Dogpile rule in this feature. Google and Bing lack this one… they show ads instead. Finally they must have a good spell checker. If you want to type faster or you do not know the particular letter for that complicated word, the search engine must be able to correct you. Google rules here.
