PlanetPhillip

Which search engine do you use? How often do you try new ones? What is your favourite one? Questions, questions, questions. Well, I’m going to tell you about some search engines that you have probably never heard of.

There was a time when I performed a weekly review of results using 5 search engines and varying search terms. I recorded the results in an Excel spreadsheet and tried to improve the position of PP.

Now, I just focus on getting great content posted as often as possible and ensuring that the site is easy to use.

Word of mouth is the best way to be found but search engine optimization is very important.

This article won’t tell you which is the best search engine. I used some very specific search criteria knowing that PlanetPhillip.com should come near the very top. To my mind if it didn’t then the results weren’t very good.

I used the term single player half-life 2 maps. I honestly feel that if PP isn’t in the top few results the search engine hasn’t done its job. That’s as scientific as this test got.

So, without further ado, the engines and opinions.

First of all, I think I’m in love. Ms Dewey is a hottie. Now that we have that out of the way, let’s look at the search engine itself. No, let’s not, not yet anyway. Let’s talk about Ms Dewey for a moment. The site is probably not very good for users with slow Internet connections because it is very graphic intensive. For those of us with broadband or above it’s great. The first thing you need to do when you load the page is ensure your speakers are on. Just watch and listen. It’s cool.

Now onto the results. Well I came second on the list, so I’m very happy. Not only that but plenty of other results are post/pages of the site. In fact many results include my PollDaddy polls.

The negative aspect is the size of the visible results. You only get to see about three at a time. To view more move your cursor to the bottom of the displayed results and it will scroll.

Here is a little background on the site: Ms Dewey at Wikipedia.org.

Conclusion:
Worth it just to watch Ms Dewey! I’m on the top, so it’s a great search engine.

Link:
http://msdewey.com/

Okay, next up is Cuil. I learnt of this one via Matt’s website. Out of ten results listed on the first page I am six of them. There are two for FPSBanana, one for HalfLife2.filefront.com and one for a really strange site called territoriopc, which looks like it just harvests its content from Wikipedia.org. However, the cool thing is how it’s presented. Take a quick look then promise to come back and finish reading this.

There are plenty of results per page and you can even change the number of columns displayed from three to two, although in all honesty it’s not much use. The other more serious issue is the images that are next to each result. More often than not, they don’t really make sense.

Conclusion:
Besides the strange images, it’s pretty good. Definitely worth trying and seeing if it suits your needs.

Link:
http://www.cuil.com

Kartoo is a meta search engine that presents the results in the form of a map. Hovering over each results displays the relationship between each, the common keywords etc.

It’s quite good for finding other, similar sites. But I am struggling to see any other benefit.

(A meta search engine is a search engine that gets listings from two or more other search engines, rather than through its own efforts.)

Conclusion:
It’s different, and sometimes that’s enough.

Link:
http://www.kartoo.com/

I didn’t like this one. Mostly because I wasn’t listed but partly because I believe the left-hand pane actually makes it harder to find what you are looking for.

Conclusion:
Probably needs getting used to before it becomes useful.

Link:
http://www.quintura.com/

The results from this search engine are displayed as screenshots than can be horizontally scrolled. I’m number one and two, so this search engine rocks. Seriously, it’s pretty cool to use and has what seems to be some really useful features.

Conclusion:
The visual aspect is pretty cool. In fact, I think I’ll make it my default search engine for a week and see how I get on.

Link:
http://www.searchme.com

This is less of a search engine and more of a tag relationship engine for Flickr.

Conclusion:
Pretty but that’s all.

Link:
http://taggalaxy.de/

I started using Clusty about a year ago and was really impressed with its results. It basically grouped the results into clusters and that made life much easier when you wanted to drill down through the results. However, I stopped using it for a whole and came back to it for this article. I’m disappointed to find that the results aren’t a focused as I remember them. I’m only number 5 on the list, although some of my entries to GameUpdates.org are on there. Again, so are my Polld Daddy Questions, so those guys know how to get their results found.

Conclusion:
Started strong but not as good as I remember it.

Link:
http://clusty.com/

Okay, not the most scientific test but still useful for me to play around with some new engines. I highly suggest you try them all and see which you feel is the best.

For pure results I believe that Clusty is pretty good. With Ms Dewey and Search Me a close second, just for the presentation.

Of course I could have listed the big search engines but that wasn’t the point of this article.

I’m going to follow up with some other search related articles in the near future, so stay tuned

I’d love to hear of other, less well-known search engines that give some interesting results.

What’s your favourite?