Written on June 3, 2008 – 12:30 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
We’ve written quite a lot about alternative search engines on this blog. It’s more than just a healthy interest, as Boris and me traveled to San Francisco in April to visit the altsearchengines meeting. So for us, it’s close to an obsession. Why? Because alternative search engines are the pioneers of search. They shape the future. Although their engines aren’t always perfect yet, you can tell where it’s going. We think that’s pretty exciting. Sometimes we stumble upon an alt engine that already does a good job, like SafeManuals and FixYa. That’s even more exciting.
Charles Knight, altsearchengines editor, tipped us about these two services. SafeManuals and FixYa are aimed at supporting people with using those complicated home devices like DVD recorders.
SafeManuals
“Your sex-toy is stuck in « defibrillator » mode and you threw away the user guide to prevent your kids from finding it?” No worries! The Communication Assistant who mailed me this is from SafeManuals. This basically is a huge directory with 883542 manuals for all kinds of devices. From scooters to iPhones and from a flatscreen TV to an old-fashioned tube. And your sex-toy…
Although the interface is horrible - lots of ads and cheesy stock photos - the Google Custom search-powered site does a good job. Some user manuals aren’t available on the manufacturer’s page anymore, yet the guys from SafeManuals somehow managed to offer them as a pdf download. It remains weird though that a service that is focused on helping people out, doesn’t seem to spend any time on their UI.
FixYa
So what if you’ve found a manual on SafeManuals but you’re still stuck with a certain problem? Then you head over to FixYa, a knowledge base that is constantly updated by a community of helpful users who share their experiences of technical problems and solutions. The huge collection of solutions is filtered by a rating system, which allows experts to arise. Like IrishDruid, a staff member from Logitech who has solved 1395 problems and considered to be a “guru”. Not all active users are staff members, but it’s a great way for companies to see what kind of problems customers have and at the same time improve their image.
Different places, more results
These vertical search-engines don’t necessarily compete with Google - SafeManuals is even using its technology -, they offer different places for niche searches. So when you search for manuals in Google, you might end up at SafeManuals where you’ll definitely find what you’re looking for. Vertical search engines are popping everywhere and we’ll be an important part of the future of search.
I hope you like that post!
The Next Web Blog covers start-up news from all over the world (not just the Valley), exciting new technologies and inspiring entrepreneurs. If you're new here, you may want to read our '
About' page and subscribe to our
RSS feed.
Do you have a start-up that we should write about?
Contact us! Thanks for visiting and hope you come back again!
Written on May 26, 2008 – 11:26 am
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Everyday I see at least one new alternative search engine presenting itself as THE new way to find what you’re looking for. Some of them are actually doing a good job, or have an interesting new approach. The problem is though, almost nobody uses these new engines. Only the innovators and some early adopters find the way to services like AndUnite, Eeggi and Faroo. The alt search engines are pioneers, but will they be able to cross the gap between the early adopters and the early majority?
While new ways of searching are coming up, there are also alternatives to other aspects of search emerging. Like HotWords, a site that aims to give an overview of “what the the world is searching for”. After stumbling on Hotwords on MoMB and reading a review on KillerStartUps I figured I might as well have a look on the site. Hotwords lists the top 100.000 most popular searches on the web with trend and ranking reports. Of the hundreds of millions searches - Google alone has 400 million a day -, they will gather data for around 6 million searches per day. Since this is a beta version, Hotwords now “only” tracks 2.5 million searches. Not surprisingly, the most popular searches are for sex and amateur porn sites like YouPorn. Around keywords like these, the London-based HotWords team has developed an incredible set of analytics tools.
Yet there’s one thing missing on Hotwords: transparency. Although they say they’ve partnered up with “several search engines”, yet it’s unknown who those partners are. For all I know, it could be a scam. Therefore, visitors don’t know what they’re missing yet and might as well browse to Google Trends.
However, I do believe that if HotWords developed an alternative search engines section, bloggers and other Internet press would certainly drop by. They’re very interested in what the innovators and early adopters are searching for. Sure, we all know the crowd is looking for porn, but what about those people who predict our geek future?
Written on April 22, 2008 – 7:52 am
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
One of the theories discussed at the Alt Search Engines meeting was that the competition for Search Engines might not just be in different, faster or better search engines but in alternative ways of finding information.
The AllTh.at team
One example is Smart Agents like AllTh.at and Google Alerts. Lots of people use Google Alerts to keep them up-to-date of new information. AllTh.at saves your searches and keeps looking for new results and notifies you via email or RSS. Previously users might have used search engines to find new information. Now there is a continuously updating search query active in the background that notifies us of new results.
Services such as Symbaloo and Netvibes make it easier to manage lots of information. This makes it easier to browse the web and find stuff. For a lot of people Google is THE portal to the web. They don’t use bookmarks or even URLs but simply open a browser, wait for Google to appear and type in what they need. As portal services (like Symbaloo) gain traction people will be less inclined to use Google to navigate the web.
What are the alternatives to Google?
A third example are the vertical search engines. You can use Google to search for words but it is more logical to use a dedicated dictionary search engine like Answers.com and a car search engine like UsedCars.com. The vertical search engines are becoming more popular every day and more verticals appear left and right.
Can you think of more ways to get to information without using Google? WikiPedia is a good alternative to Google is you are looking for specific information. What other alternatives are there?
Written on April 21, 2008 – 10:51 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
We keep running into people who are making interesting search applications. Like Laurent Baleydier, the CEO of KartOO technologies. Over a coffee at the altsearchengines day, he told us that KartOO specializes in visualizing internet and intranet data to improve the accessibility of search engines. The techniques are developed in the French University Labs in Clermont, France.
Next Web editor Boris and KartOO president Laurent Beleydier
KartOO runs three search engines. KartOO.com - a free Meta search engine that allows you to find your results trough in interactive map -, UJIKO.com - a social thumbs up/down engine -, and KVisu.com - a rather spectacular engine that shows your search data as a land map.
The engines have at least one thing in common: impressive graphics. Whether it’s your style or not, you can’t deny that KartOO understands that you have to spoil the eyes when it comes to visualization. Some other search engines, like Quintura, seem to forget that.
I also like the fact that KartOO uses the engines of Yahoo and Google, since a lot of people are still a bit hesitated to use another engine than Google. The alt search engines are really important, as they are the pioneers who invent our search future. Yet when it comes to a quick search, people still use the search giant. When services like KartOO build on the strength of Google and make it a richer tool, I think they have a better chance to bridge the gap between Google and alternative search engines.
Written on April 21, 2008 – 8:39 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
Our white suits work. Alex Pachikov walked up to me a few minutes ago, asking what the overdressing was about. I’m glad he did, as he’s the director of Evernote, a promising start-up that made me enthusiastic the second Alex showed it on my Mac. The uber-stylish and modern design expresses what the service is about: creating a visual notebook to memorize anything you stumbled on.
Alex Pachikov from Evernote.com
You can do that by downloading their desktop and mobile app. Make a picture or a screenshot and sync it with the website - where you can look up the notebook. You can then use it as one big library of things to remember, but I think Evernote also functions perfectly as some sort of mood board. I used to have an ‘Inspiration’ album in iPhoto, yet Evernote will definitely replace this. Especially as your notebook is available off line as well.
Also digging the idea already? It’s getting better. Since we’re at an altsearchengines meeting, there must be some link with searching here. Well, there is, and not just a mediocre one. You can search within the notebooks as it recognizes text in images. Even handwriting! For example, when I search for San Francisco in my notebook, Evernote finds a screenshot of a Google map I’ve made and highlights the terms:
They don’t offer any syncing with other services like Twitter yet, but Alex told me they will soon start working on some API magic. Although he did tell me that Evernote isn’t that much about sharing and more like a personal service: “It’s your second memory”, he said.
Well here’s some good news for you: we have fifty private beta invites for your memory! Digg this post, leave a comment and I’ll personally email you a link to the sign-up page of Evernote.
Written on April 21, 2008 – 5:19 pm
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, editor in chief
The first guys I met here are Josh and Sum from the young and enthusiastic team of eeggi. They drove six hours from LA to arrive here 7am sharp. And they had all the reason to do that, since they’ve quite an interesting search engine to present. 
They claim it’s the world’s first mathematically-based Search and Retrieve, Response, and Discovery engine (ReDi engine), capable of focusing on the concept of text and not just the text itself”.
So basically, if you searched for an “exciting dvd”, the results would probably also include “breathtaking movie” or “thrilling film”. It reminds me of the iStockphoto’s search engine, that asks you what the meaning of your ambiguous search terms is. Only eeggi will find that out itself.
After five years of protecting and patenting, the guys from eeggi are now ready to “play”. It only took them three months to develop the prototype, which will launch in open beta in a few months. Josh McMillin, the CFO, told me that they’re going in a total different direction than the other alternative search engines. Sounds promising, let’s see how it turns out.
[reported live from the AltSearchEngines event]
Written on April 21, 2008 – 4:54 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
The first company I met today was Faroo. They are from Germany and Gosia Garbe, the CEO, gave me a quick update on their progress.
Garbe started development on Faroo more than 6 years ago and launched during Techcrunch40 here in San Francisco about a year ago. They are based in Germany. It is a P2P search engine that users install on their PCs, is free to use, as quick as Google and even can earn you some money as revenue is shared with users.
Garbe told me she was slightly disappointed with user adoption (actual downloads) since they launched.
Unfortunately the application only works on PCs and isn’t supported on Mac and Linux and there is no way to test the actual search engine without installing the application first. I can imagine that this requires too big a leap of faith for most users.
The idea of P2P search is interesting though. Google reportedly spends 2 billion a year on their server infrastructure. If a search engine would be able to move all that data to the end user thereby speeding up the service and saving huge amounts of money that would give them a huge edge.
The question is how to entice these users to start contributing to a product that won’t prove its benefit until you start contributing. A chicken and egg problem that Faroo is eager to solve.
[reported live from the AltSearchEngines event]
Written on April 21, 2008 – 3:09 pm
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten,
Ernst-Jan and I will be reporting live from the invitation only ‘Alternative Search Engines’ Day‘ event in San Francisco today. The event is organized by altsearchengines.com which is part of the ReadWriteWeb network and blogs daily about search engine news.
They were kind enough to invite us over to their closed event because we have shared a couple of stories in the past and are both eager to find out what the next step in Search will be.
On Monday, April 21st, a unique event will take place as dozens of Alternative Search Engines gather together for one special day organized by them and for them. Panels will be led by HealthPricer, UpTake, SeeqPod, Powerset, KartOO, and AltSearchEngines. There will also be a presentation by GoPubMed. The event is not open to the public - or Google.
What happens when you get dozens of the top alternative search engines in the same room for an entire day? We’ll let you know live and direct from the event!
Update:
Kick-off by Charles Knight, founder of AltSearchEngines.com.
There are 227 alternative search engines right now.
Demo of http://www.sputtr.com/. Multi-Search engine.
Now Symbaloo.com (Dutch Simple Search engine with labels)
Richard MacManus, founder of ReadWriteWeb on stage too.
Question of the day: ‘Is the status quo fine or do we need a new direction?’
Quote: ‘We are frenemies’. The 227 alternative search engines don’t really compete but all have their own niche.
Nitin Karandikar gives us a summary of his Manifesto for cooperation for Alt Search Engines.
Coffee break!
Now on stage: HealthPricer with Spock and SurfCanyon
Enough updates on Al Search Engines for us today. We are now moving on to the Pownce lunch and after that 2 more events which you will read about more here later. More information about this event on Alt Search Engines and ReadWriteWeb!
Email
Facebook
Netlog
Linkedin
Twitter
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show of, the future of the Web. (
