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Does any New Search Engine Stand a Chance Against Google?
Posted by Matt | Posted in News and Info | Posted on December-7-2008
While this still remains to be seen, the founders of the enormously popularly and widely referenced Wikipedia website, have decided to give it a go. Their search engine site Wikia Search is similar to the big three (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) in that the results are displayed in the standard fashion, with ads along the top and right hand side.
To test out the relevancy of this newest Google challenger, I did a search on ‘basketball’. The results are displayed in a manner that is very similar to Google with a few exceptions. The first result (as I also tested with several other searches) is always a wikipedia article relating to the search query, which makes sense I guess. Also along the top of the results page, various topics related to the search query are given. In the case of my ‘basketball’ search, the topics included: shoes, games, drills, court, plays, rules, etc.
Another unique feature of the site is that users never have to go page by page through the results. As you scroll down the page new results are continually added, so you can continue to just scroll down until you find the result that best matches your search.
Cool features aside, the determining factor of whether or not this search site will be successful lies solely in the relevancy of the search results given. So far they are doing a pretty good job. As for being a serious competitor to Google…only time will tell!
I think it’s gonna be really hard for anyone to beat Google in the short run. But lately some new competitors are showing up. One as you say is the wikia search. Another one, among others, that i found quite interesting is http://www.exalead.com/search/homepage. It combines many already existing useful ideas. To me it needs a little more development on the results, but it’s an interesting alternative.