The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, July
Obessive? Compulsive? or both?
Just in case you haven’t noticed, the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines (ASE) or “Alts,” list is compulsively organized in “Base 10.” It starts with the Master List of 1,000 ASE that is maintained by the “List Masters” so as to keep it up-to-date. It will never grow beyond 1,000 for quality control reasons.
Then, every month, I reach into this pool and select what I believe are the best 10%, or the Top 100. Obviously, that means that, just like an iceberg, there are 900 that you don’t see! But, since even 100 search engines is too much to ask you to look at (at just 10 minutes apiece it would take you 16 hours), the Top 100 has 10 Alts marked with a <hm> symbol, for “honorable mention,” which just means you might have time to look at ten ASE this month. An asterisk (*) means it already was an honorable mention.
I get paid to search for search engines!
Then, out of the Top 100, one Alt is selected as the Search Engine of the Month. There is no scientific basis for this, I’ll gladly disclose that right now. I liken the process to that of a movie critic. Here are 100 movies that I have seen, because I’m paid to do nothing but watch movies all month (or search engines), and here are 10 that you might want to consider. But if you only have time to see one, here is my recommendation… Of course you might go see it and hate it, but that’s life, isn’t it? Hopefully I’m right most of the time!
The Search Engine of the Year
Anyway, by November, there will be, you guessed it, 10 Alt. SE of the Month, and one of those ten will be given the coveted “Alternative Search Engine of the Year, 2007″ award. For 2006 it was ChaCha.
AltSearchEngines is Going Global!
One more very important “10.” Starting with this list, there will always be 10% or 10 slots reserved for International Alts. We are ‘Going Global,’ at AltSearchEngines; we acknowledge that there are many good search engines out there that do not have English as their “first language” (although they may or may not have an English version), and are not headquartered in the USA or UK.
And that’s important, because this month’s Search Engine of the Month is the Russian search engine Dialogus! 
I think the tag line, “there find answers,” sort of gives it away! Here is their “pitch” (translated by me)
Dialogus is a new generation search engine that:
Automatically searches for answers to questions.
Convenience - only answers questions, no links.
Finding - answers, facts, quotes, ideas, opinions.
Time - this saves you time and your attention.
When you ask Dialogus a question, it processes it like any natural language (Semantic, “meaning-based,” Natural Language Processing (NLP), or Artificial Intelligence AI) search engine might, but it does it in plain view. Here are some examples:
the blue bars indicate parallel processing for “lexical analysis,” “morphological analysis,” and “syntax and semantic analysis.” You keep watching the dashes move - just like the Family Circus cartoons, remember?
Your query then moves on, in Rube Goldberg fashion, through “data extraction” 
and “answer sortment,” and then finally, “answer preparation.” 
Now, before you say, “Gotcha! Charles - I tested it and it gave a poor answer -or a slow answer- or even a wrong- or no- answer.” Please, do not leave such a comment. Dialogus says right on the box that they are still in Beta, and I will disclose that when compared to similar search engines on the Top 100 list such as Hakia, Lexxe, or Cognition, it may not do as well.
Two things; one, I think all of the “natural language” search engine projects are struggling with accuracy of search results issues. I have written another article on that subject alone.
Which comes first….
Secondly, it always comes down to style over substance, Interface over Index, time and again. Do you produce a solid index and a killer algorithm and de-emphasize the User Interface (UI), or do you come up with the UI, possibly patent it, and then get to work improving your results and building your own index?
Most people will argue that if your results are poor, no one will appreciate your nice interface, because they will have gone somewhere else, i.e. back to Google - (repeat after me; fast and accurate; fast and accurate, accurate and fast…)
But, for better or worse, I am not like most people. I freely admit that I look through the wrong end of the telescope. Let the results speak for themselves: GoshMe, KoolTorch, AfterVote, Quintura, KartOO, and now Dialogus.
If those don’t grab you, that’s fine. In all seriousness, there are 99 others to consider. Just leave a comment sharing the one that you would have chosen and why, that’s all I ask.
I’ve actually never seen an episode of “Lost”
The Alts show us, I believe, what Search can look like compared to a plain search box on a white page and a list of 10 results. These Alts are the ones I would want if I was “Lost” on a desert island. I know that they need to “catch up” on building their own index, on their speed and their relevancy/accuracy, but I bet they know that, too.
In the end, is there any Alt on the list that doesn’t want to be fast and accurate like Google, but innovative with a new and engaging user experience? I think they all share pretty much the same goal, they just take different paths to reach it. Oh, and BTW, Here’s the link to the entire list: The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, July 2007. Below we’ve got the list in HTML format.
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July 19th, 2007 at 8:46 pm
[…] the range of meaning strategies used to deliver a message relevant to that thing. This post uses Charles Knight’s list of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, and considers the different ways the names on the list relate to web […]
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July 27th, 2007 at 5:57 pm
Speaking of Google, perhaps it’s time to admit that the emperor is buck naked? Google is no longer an asset to small business. It’s digressed into a black box designed to extract as much money as possible from small business while giving back as little value as possible. This piece explains why Adwords is something to be skeptical about: “Why Google Adwords is Not Helpful to Small Business” http://smartstartup.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/07/a-fable-doing-b.html
July 30th, 2007 at 2:15 am
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July 31st, 2007 at 10:48 pm
I think starting with 10% international is a great idea. You might want to do an exclusive non-American 100 alt search engines.
I belong to the recruiting industry and can say that sites like recruit.net, wowjobs.ca and bixee.com should get more coverage.
August 9th, 2007 at 1:24 am
[…] & upload the abstract in English as well. Furthermore FAROO is already mentioned in the top 100 list of alternative search engines in july. And at least FAROO is obviously just worth an entry in the English version of […]
August 30th, 2007 at 10:23 am
What you know about QA search engine AskNet?
AskNet - is a search system that provides information search by query in natural language. This system is based on the complex morphologic, syntactic and semantic analysis procedures of user’s query as well as of indexed texts. As a result, “information noise” has been considerably reduced and the efficiency of system answer relevant to user`s query has been enhanced.
AskNet is an intelligent search system that doesn`t have any analogues worldwide. Its intelligence is based on the syntactic and semantic analyze of the adequacy of searched information to user`s query in natural language. At that to the user’s query in natural language the system displays the most adequate to user query sentences from indexed texts. The search can be made considering synonyms and derivatives grouped according to their semantic meaning. If necessary, the system verifies automatically the appropriate synonyms set with unique semantic meaning.
The system supports also all basic possibilities provided by other existing in the market search engines, including morphlogic search, keywords search and frequency analysis. For keyword search the unique feature is syntactic and semantic user`s query analysis algorithm, creation of list of words and their logical relations for search, as well as the algorithm of automatic search area increasing by means of the less significant user’s query words truncation and use of synonyms for the most significant user’s query words.
Information search (efficiency and relevance) enhancement in the arrays of unformalized text information is provided by means of automatic realization (on the basis of complex linguistic analysis) of the most relevant to user`s query indexed texts sentences selection in natural language.
The methodical basis to provide effective search is the complex intellectual procedures realization of text information and user`s query morphological, syntactic and semantic analysis.
The system is user-friendly for the system provides a natural language dialog with user.
September 7th, 2007 at 9:09 pm
Hi Guys,
Thanks for your support in the past, If you require any information on my technology that can help others to search the web better, just let me know.
I love your website and would gladly help to promote it where I can.
Cheers
Rob Gabriel
Founder and Developer of MyLiveSearch
Worlds First Live Search Engine.
+61 3 9356 0077
www.mylivesearch.com
info@mylivesearch.com
Melbourne, Australia
October 31st, 2007 at 11:39 am
Where you looking for the top 100 movies of all time based on a search engine? I am confused at what you are trying to say.
December 11th, 2007 at 10:42 am
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