How many searches do you actually use on the net?
Statistically, little less than half of the people reading this, are using big brother Google, followed by his older brother Yahoo – which has dramatically improved in the last years, MSN and so on. Other search engines’ market share rounds on about 3,4 not-so-significant percents.
However new and interesting search engines are rising and so does the question – are they going to climb above the “Other 3,4%”?
Have you all heard of Mahalo?
Mahalo is a “human-powered search engine” as they put it and the Hawaiian translation of the word is actually “Thank you”. (???)
The main benefit of using Mahalo is the fact it really is human-powered and its increasingly gaining traffic is improving site content’s quality and width, therefore some results may already be good enough for you. I say may, because demand varies from person to person.
It does have some problems at the time, since it doesn’t cover all the searches people are looking for. If we type in hamburger however, the result is somewhat Mahalo is made to do:
- The Mahalo top 7 sites about hamburgers (chosen by contributors employed in Mahalo)
- followed by always-there ads by Google
- Hamburger recipes
- Where to go for a Hamburger
- Hamburger Blogs
- Hamburger news
-….
Very thorough (and I would judge – good) search reviewed by Mahalo employees to ensure quality. Therefore when searching for similar kind of keywords, Mahalo is great. Try typing in Cocktails 
However, typing in “marketing”, “articles” or any kind of local and/or non-American search, you will end up with not accurate, not helpful, time wasting results.
Let’s give them some time.
Hey – they are still good for cocktail recipes.
Wikia Search – community driven search engine
Compared to Mahalo, Wikia doesn’t have employees to organize, add and edit search results. Community does all of that.
Jimmy Wales stayed true to himself and his followers on his new project as well. So (as Wikia Search nicely puts it on their landing page) main principles are:
- Transparency
- Community
- Quality
- Privacy
It however is pretty different than Mahalo. The thing is Wikia is a search engine, period – don’t hold your breath waiting for Wikia to suggest you a place with great cocktails, or quick tips on the matter. It gives you search.
So what makes it so different to other search engines? Why use Wikia? Well’ don’t use it. Not now at least. Although you might be interested to know that Wikia Search is recording faster growth than Wikipedia did when it first started, but their search results are not good enough yet to be compared with any of other good search engines.
It is good to use because of these:
- If there is a search you’d like to change, you can do that easily. Hover over results to see edit button on the right hand side, and you can edit a certain result in a second.
- You can rate it! Easy – same as editing, so that people searching this stuff will know its approximate value.
- You can comment the result.
- You can even DELETE it. How’s that for community driven?
- You can customize your Wikia as well!
However, they are still loading the shelves (I even helped a couple of times), but we have to say – its intention is pure and good. Better search is always welcome, we just have to wait for it to be fully operational.
NOTE: They launched in the start of 2008 and the reviews on search back then were horrible. Today, their search is just inadequate. Who knows what tomorrow will bring?
Bundles on YouBundle
For better understanding bundle definition: A group of objects held together by wrapping or tying.
YouBundle is actually a bundle of your expertise on a certain subject. It is still in beta testing stage (I offered to help). It’s intention is not to offer the user a zillion hits on the subject, but rather a bundle of selected, quality and related search results.
It is somehow a mix of Mahalo and Wikia. It is algorithmic search, which results are ordered, rated, edited by YouBundle community, that can flag results SPAM, PORN and TOS (violating terms of service). They will also rate searches, moving them up and down the result ladder.
I cannot say whether it’s search is competetive to at least Wikia or Mahalo, since there is still nothing on their landing page and I am (unfortunatelly) still waiting for their invitation.
P.S. I found some beta mockup of their landing page
How will we search the web in years to come?
This would be the ultimate question after a record-setting-long-post-in-centrsource-blogging-history.
How do you imagine your search results as the web keeps growing and growing? It is constantley giving us more and more results, because there are more and more web sites and all of them want to climb and stay in the magical Google triangle?
Will search offer us more in the future or will we end up searching among the search results? Will we have bundlers, wikians and mahalos doing that for us? Are these search engines tip of the semantic web iceberg?
Do we expect more of the search or are we content by links?
Do you think we will search through these kind of search engines or are we going to stay true to algorithmic search kings?
I guess we will know soon as there are more and more search engines trying to beat Google and others’ quality. With Wikia and Mahalo operating and improving daily plus YouBundle launching on September we’re getting close to know the result!
