Rate Search Engine ShipGooder. Can you say that?

November 30th, 2007 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Reviews | No Comments »

ShipGooder’s purpose is to provide fast, accurate, competitive shipping rate information in the U.S. and Canada. In essence, to be your shipping guide.


ShipGooder was founded in 2006 in Toronto, Canada, as a simple, fast method to find optimum shipping rates by quickly comparing local, regional and national couriers. ShipGooder provides value for couriers and their customers by providing rate and service comparisons with simplicity, speed, and adaptability. Their instant rate search was launched in August 2007.




ShipGooder provides a rate engine to get the best shipping rates by comparing local, regional and national courier companies. Since all couriers aren’t competitive in all locations, ShipGooder offers a way to check and compare the best rates. ShipGooder provides instant price comparisons and delivery options from a range of couriers. It’s that simple! 

Academic Search Engine Intute Yields Odd Result!

November 30th, 2007 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Newcomers | No Comments »

Intute is a free online service providing you with access to the very best Web resources for education and research.  The service is created by a network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and evaluate the websites in our database and write high quality descriptions of the resources.


OK, here’s the deal:  Their specialists have evaluated all of the websites in their academic database, so they out to be pretty boring, right?  Not so!

Care to  go for a test drive?  I promise you’ll regret it.

1) Got to Intute.

2) Search for ‘Absinthe’

 

3) Intute will return two results:

Click on the link to the second one.

4) Click on the first movie: “In Absinthe and Women.” (you need flash)

5) No need to thank me!

Search Engine KartOO Visu (beta) don’t miss this!

November 30th, 2007 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Innovations | No Comments »

Search Engine of the Year finalist KartOO is well known for their innovative search engine map results.  If you’ve never seen KartOO, please stop and go here.  KartOOvisu takes their visualization technology to a whole new level.


First, go to KartOOviso and type in a word and then hit ‘Rechercher’





Now, here’s the magic – you will see on the right this green map – a very visual version of a tag cloud.  Click on one of the “stepping stones” and the results on the left instantly adjust.

 The reults may come back in French, so if you would rather have the English version, just look for the language tab on the very left (see below).






Run, don’t walk, and check this one out today! (The Search Engine of the Year award is Monday.)

Just the Best Search Engine in the World! Gosh!

November 30th, 2007 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Guest Authors | 3 Comments »



Just how many search engines are there in the world?

It has recently been estimated that there are 1,700+ search engines in the world.  We agree with that estimate.


“Even without that, there are already more than 1700 search engines in the marketplace.” -Lexxe News 


But I thought you said you only had 1,000.

We started AltSearchEngines with a Master List of 1,000.  Since then we have found an average of one new one per day for six months, for around 180 more.  Then we began searching for Global search engines every Saturday, and I imagine that has added about 120 more.

Will you ever find them all?

I predict that at our current rate of discovery that we will find – but not necessarily review – most of the 1,700 by our anniversary date, June 1, 2008.

Then what will you do?

Hopefully people will keep inventing new ones, plus the existing ones keep adding new features.

Will one of these 1,700 ever beat Google? 

Some think so, but I don’t.  I believe it will be a group of them.

Why do you list only the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines?

Because we want to highlight the ones that truly deserve your attention.  Besides, are you really going to look at more than 100?  How many readers have even had the time to look at ”only” the Top 100?  And the list changes every month, too!

Why are there only 10 finalists for the Search Engine of the Year award?

Every month for the past ten Top 100 lists, I have seleted, purely on my own, one Search Engine of the Month to feature.  Note:  That does not reflect poorly on the other 99!  Remember, all 100 are the “best in show.”

How will you select the Search Engine of the Year from those ten finalists?

Very carefully!  The popular vote, now around 200, will be one factor, but there will be others – market share, innovation, features, and so on.  It won’t be easy; please keep me in your prayers!

When will you make the announcement?

This Monday, December 3rd, along with the final Top 100 List for 2007.

Does that make the other nine losers? 

If you were one of the top ten search engines in the world (hypothetically), would you feel like a loser?

Where will you be on Monday?

In the federal witness protection program.  No, actually in Chicago at the SES Chicago conference.

What if I have a question that you haven’t covered?

Please leave a comment!

Why does Berkowitz keep voting for Google? ;-) Are they a finalist?

No, they’re not.  David does not feel that any of the ‘Alts’ will ever truly succeed.

A Chat with Ed Freyfogle, co-founder of Nestoria

November 29th, 2007 by Charles S. Knight
Posted in Reviews | No Comments »

Here at AltSearchEngines we’re continually exposed to new innovation in the search engine market. All over the world people are working hard to build the next Google or Yahoo!. Which is why we took notice when we recently learned of a tiny start up based 1000’s of miles from Silicon Valley that has been used as a case study by both Google and Yahoo!.

Nestoria is a European property search engine we’ve covered in the past. They are used as the Google maps case study and were recently featured on the Yahoo! User Interface blog as well for some of their design innovation.












To find out more about why they have been singled out for this double honor, we talked to Ed Freyfogle, co-founder of Nestoria.

Ed, can you give us the 5 cent tour?
Sure. We’re a very small team of internet veterans based in London. We focus on one thing: helping people find their next home as quickly and easily as possible. We launched our UK property search engine in the summer of 2006 and our Spanish property search engine in May of 2007. Things have gone well ever since.

What have been the key pieces to Nestoria’s success?
We’ve put together a very skilled and motivated team with deep experience in all aspects of search (paid and organic). We work hard to deliver the best user experience possible. We’ve been fortunate to be able to build on top of lots of great software – be it standard opensource tools like perl and mysql, or the tools from the internet giants like the Yahoo User Interface library or Google Maps. We’ve also been very lucky to partner with many local UK and Spanish sites.

A lot of start ups are skilled and work hard though, what is it exactly that has allowed Nestoria to differentiate itself from the rest?
One thing we feel strongly about in the team is that we really have no idea what we’re doing. None of us has ever bought a home in the UK for example. Instead we measure everything that happens on the website and then incrementally improve based on the numeric feedback we get from 1000s of Nestoria users.

What are the plans for continued international expansion? Will we see Nestoria in the US?
We’ve been approached by some players in the North American market, but right now it’s not a focus for us. We’re looking at other European markets. Each market is very different both in terms of user behavior and market structure, so we have to be smart about keeping the software scalable and still meeting the business requirements. We’re always looking for ways to partner – hopefully we’ll have some announcements to make in this respect shortly. Anyone who is interested should get in please touch.

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