Before we dive into my specific, and purely personal, choices for the Top 10 alternative search engines, I’d like to make a few general observations.  First of all, the gap between the major search engines and the alternatives to them, in terms of the user’s experience, continues to widen, a lot.  Google has been compared to a luxury liner that is very, very slow to turn around, versus the speedboat sized startups that can turn, or innovate, on a dime.  I guarantee that if you try these ten search tools, you won’t come away saying, “Hey, that’s just like Google.”

Secondly, 2008 is the year that the ubiquitous white homepage with a rectangular search box in the middle finally “jumped the shark.”  These templates belong to the past, not the future, of Search.  That is not to say that you don’t have to communicate what you want, but the trend is certainly towards variety and away from The Box. For example with ChaCha (or Tazti.com) you simply speak; with Surfcanyon it understands implicitly what you are looking for.)

Related to this is the fact that three of the Top 10 require one-time downloads, once thought to be the kiss of death when Google is the other choice.  But a tipping point will be reached in 2009 because the rewards will outweigh the “risk,” at least for the power users.  Everyone else – 2010.  Faroo, KallOut, and Surfcanyon (again, see also Tazti) are all well worth leaving your comfort zone for.

Finally, I wonder how many of these 10 search tools you have used, seen, or even heard of, before today.  The latest data (from Hitwise) shows that the four major search engines get over 98% of all US search traffic, the rest – combined – get less than 2%.  These wonderful inventions need and deserve more exposure – so do your part and take the time to try out each one! On that note, let’s begin.

Note: These 10 search engines are listed alphabetically.

1. ChaCha

ChaCha, as a search tool, is human-powered, general, and mobile. There is no website, no search box, and no list of ten links. To use ChaCha, you simply call 1-800-2ChaCha (1-800-224-2242) in the US, or text them at 242242.

If you call, you leave your query as a perfectly ordinary voice mail message and hang up. In 2-5 minutes, a human guide will research the answer and text it to you. I have used ChaCha when I was lost in NYC at midnight using only my cheap cell phone. And that’s very important: with ChaCha you can call them at ANY time with ANY question for ANY reason on ANY phone – as long as it can receive that text answer. And aside from your carrier’s incoming text fee, ChaCha is free. Peggy Salz, of MSearchGroove and our Mobile Search expert, recently reported on ChaCha.

2. CoolIris / SearchMe / Viewzi

2008 was the year that image visualizations of search results met the iPhone. CoolIris has already won one RWW award, as one of the Top 10 Consumer Apps of 2008. Rick Turoczy writes, “Visual browsing is still coming into its own, but Cooliris is leading the charge in a way that consumers will embrace.” Like ReadWriteWeb, we have followed CoolIris since it’s PicLens days. Following right behind are SearchMe and Viewzi. Each of these three visual search engines will display your search results beautifully and fluidly on your iPhone, but in different styles, so you might as well download all three and experiment. There is a video on each site.

3. Faroo

With alternative search engines, there should be at least one clear difference between the major search engines and it’s alternative. With Faroo, you need to change your search paradigm 180 degrees. Instead of one giant company (say, Google) storing billions of web pages on thousands of servers which cost millions of dollars (roughly), Faroo, now in public beta, is a P2P or peer to peer network which connects individual PCs, like yours and mine, with every other Faroo member’s. The result is an organic looking web that can grow as the Internet grows, but without the massive server farms. To join with me on Faroo, just download it here.

4. KallOut

KallOut is one of the favorite discoveries this year of our writer Rafi Farber, as he notes in his review. Once again, it’s time to put away the image of that rectangular search box! It’s 2008! With KallOut, you don’t have to stop what you’re doing and fool with a toolbar, a tab, or a window. You simply drag your cursor with your mouse, and KallOut performs the search for you right there, literally right there. You can download KallOut here, and then practice a bit until you get the hang of it. No, it’s not a harder way to search, it’s a more efficient way to search. You’ll see.

5. Kosmix

Kosmix is, in a way, the modern evolution of the old meta search engines. What Kosmix has done is to answer your query with a long, tabloid like page of results in every possible category that you might possibly need. There are multiple news sources, several video choices, images from various sites, just about everything! Audio from SeeqPod, Opinions from Omgili, Video from Truveo, more info from Mahalo and Snappyfingers, plus all of the major sources such as eBay, YouTube, and Wikipedia. For each search query, you essentially get an on-the-fly multimedia encyclopedia laid out on one page. Kosmix recently came into a little money, too. (Disclosure: Kosmix is an ASE sponsor.)

The rest of the Top 10 are continued at ReadWriteWeb.  Click here.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 19th, 2008 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Alts, Innovations, News, Top 100, Verticals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.