There are several significant aspects of this monthly update of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines (100 out of well over 1,000 remember!) to cover.

First of all, I have been working with Eurekster, maker of the ubiquitous Swikis, and Lijit, with their fine widget, about how to integrate them, if at all, into a list of “traditional” search engines. That is, practically every search engine on the list begins with a home page with a search box, and then they go in 100 directions.  In order to communicate their peculiar status, and to invite your feedback, I have tacked on Eurekster and Lijit.  What do you think, should Swikis and widgets be treated like traditional search engines?

Without a doubt, search engines are creating widget versions of themselves are a furious pace.  The List shows just the main search sites.  Perhaps someday there will be a Top 100 Alternative Search Engine Widgets list.

Secondly, whereas you may remember that last month’s update was characterized by stability,  with very little change, this month’s update shifted by 10%.  Basically, I reviewed all of the really new discoveries that I have made -and posted about- in the past few months, and grafted the best ones into the List.  Of course that necessitated removing a few search engines, but this List has always favored the new and innovative over the old and staid.  Reading last month’s list, someone might have concluded that the pace of new Alts had slowed to a crawl, but that’s not so.

There are the new search engines on the list like Scandoo, Grayboxx, Graphwise, and Zoeksite.  But there are also, as noted before, a great number of Alts in Stealth or private Alpha or Beta mode.  There is a separate post, “The Mother of all Stealth Search Engines Report” coming out tomorrow.  It is longer than it’s ever been!

Thirdly, this month creates the 10th and last Search Engine of the Month.  In a future post I will showcase all 10 of them (they are marked on the List), and invite your feedback during the month of November.  On Monday, December 3rd, one of these 10 will be crowned the Search Engine of the Year for 2007!  First the first time, you, the readers, will have input into the results!  Stay tuned for a post featuring all 10 monthly winners.

I have removed the country codes for now, since we are always over the 10% non-USA mark.  Zoeksite, for example, is from the Netherlands.  The honorable mentions are gone as well; they have out-lived their usefulness.  I know you can’t check out all 100 Alts on the List, but please check out as many as you can, especially the 10 marked “SEM.”

What makes this List different from the others that I just shared in the Top 10 Lists of Search Engine Lists post, is that it is the best one that holds to a certain number, and is not just one long, all-inclusive and therefore indiscriminate list.  By having a limited number of slots, it forces me to include the very best ones.

I have said elsewhere that 2008 will prove that the Future of Search (FoS) is the Vertical Search Engines (VSE) plus (+) a Virtual User Interface (VUI).  FoS = VSE + VUI.  Well, if there are 10 “Top” Health Search engines – and most of our verticals are the Top 10 __________ Search engines, then when two are on the list, it’s important to remember that the other eight are still out there! 

It’s also important to remember that as one hundred separate search engines, these Top 100 very excellent Alts are splitting much less than that 1.7% of market share that we posted about last week.  If the Alts don’t take a different approach, wouldn’t you predict that a year from now we might be in roughly the same market share position, only with a few names dropped, and some new names added? 

Of course an optimist would say that in 2008 these “new names” will represent new technolgies which will fundamentally change the ground rules by which Search is played, i.e. the Semantic Web search engines, and that certainly is one very strong possibility.

And now, without any further delay, is the final Search Engine of the Month, the representative of a whole new Vertical for AltSearchEngines – Arabic (or Arabic/English) Search engines, drum roll… 

           

The Search Engine of the Month for November is Onkosh and Onkosh mobile!

Onkosh is the search portal for the Arabic web. Onkosh understands the Arabic language and utilizes advanced Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to ensure that you receive the best results for your search query. 

Here is what makes Onkosh so comprehensive:

Onkosh Web Search – Search the web for Arabic and Arabic-related sites.
Onkosh Image Search – Search images on the web for Arabic and Arabic-related sites.
Onkosh Blog Search – View the most popular blogs and search through thousands.
Onkosh News Search– Onkosh specializes in aggregating news from Arabic sources.
Onkosh Forum Search – Search millions of posts in Arabic or Arabic-related forums.
Onkosh File Search – Search for music files, mp3s, music videos, and other files.
Onkosh Directory – View and search the Arabic Open Directory listings.
Onkosh Bel-3araby – Search for Arabic using English characters. Give it a try.
Onksoh Mobile - Onkosh brings the Arabic web to your mobile!

Later, in another post, and with Onkosh’s help, we’ll give you the Top 10 Arabic search engines:

Here are the links to the entire Top 100 Alternative Search Engines List.

The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, November 2007  (.pdf)

The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines, November 2007   (.xls)