3 Unique Search Engines of the Future
The internet is a whole lot of nothing without a search engine or two. While the staying power of search engines has never been in question, it's been interesting to see how they've evolved to the point of replacing the address bar.
With more information being published on the internet and different filters for interpreting this information being created, here's a look at a our picks of unique search engines that are making headlines and changing the way we search.
Viewzi
There's no question that Viewzi is a search engine of the future with a host of visual features. Viewzi is a visual search engine that's only gotten better since its initial public launch. What makes Viewzi so unique is the various visual viewing options that are available for users to view their search results. From the album and mp3 search view for music, to the 3D Photo Cloud and Celebrity Photo views, there's something for everyone with Viewzi.
SearchMe
Listed as one of Time magazine's best websites of 2008, SearchMe is a slick search engine with an advanced and intuitive interface. Search results are displayed as a gallery of images that allows you to see the page without having to click-through. Do a search on "Obama" and SearchMe will note that you're probably referring to the future presidential candidate Barack Obama. In doing so, SearchMe will present you with several related categories to narrow your search such as Politicians, Democratic Party, US Government, and Political News. SearchMe also provides users with the option to create stacks, or bundles of web pages saved for later. This is a highly unique search engine of the future.
Custom Search Engines
Rollyo is a service that allows you to create your own custom search engine. While we also recommend Google's service that offers the same concept, Rollyo is a little more user friendly. Users can enter up to 25 individual sites to roll into a custom search engine. If you sign up for the service you can make your custom search engines either public or private and add it to your Firefox browser.
Custom search engines are unique and valuable search engines of the future because of what you can do with them. Sarah Perez noted how you can build your own custom search engine with your bookmarks. You can also build your own custom search engine to search through the archives of your competitors and see if they've written about anything you'd like to write about. In essence, you're providing the filters for your very own personalized search engine by only searching the sites you'd like to see results from.
What Did We Miss?
While there are tons of alternative search engines, we'd like to know what you think will be unique search engines of the future. Don't just give out names. Let us know what you're using now and which search engines you expect to see being used a lot more in the future. For more alternative search engine goodness, we recommend heading over and subscribing to AltSearchEngines.
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The next gen search engines look great but I'm worried if they are taking advantage of our faster/better computer hardware and forgetting about the mainstream who might find this sites slower to use...
It is taking advantage of the hardware, but prices for computers and better hardware have been going down for years. Broadband is a little cheaper, but it could be expensive for people in more remote areas.
It does have its disadvantages, but at the same time, it'll push people to upgrade not only their hardware, but their knowledge of these components and how they all work together.
Might by worth taking a look at YouPage.co.uk. A UK business and events search engine.
Kartoo.com was the original visual search engine. Its quite usable and fast.
I first met Jonathan Abrams, the founder of Friendster, in 2000 while he was CEO of Hotlinks.com. That's the search engine that should have been. It was wonderfully innovative as a social search engine fed by user links. Alas, it was a CMGI company and they ran out of money and the company was shuttered.
Mark Brooks
212-444-1636
http://www.socialnetworkingwatch.com
I've created some Google Custom Search Engines I am proud of:
http://www.readle.net/ - Quality Controlled Web Search
http://gs.readle.net/ - World's Largest Gadgets Search
http://www.clipoid.com/ - World's Largest Video Search
These look like they could be a lot of fun... PicLense is also a nice option. FireFox plugin that has similar functionality. Makes images.google.com so much more entertaining.
Keep your eye on briteclick.com. They're launching at TechCrunch50 and have a totally different take on search. I've been using their private beta release for a couple of months and it's incredible.
Some Google custom engines seem quite useful as this one for Downloading any kind of stuff.. http://www.google.com/coop/cse?cx=006896599804693033867:kzu8ggqyfz4
You may want to have a look at Tineye: http://tineye.com/login - who is enabling users to search with images (reverse image search).
Liveplasma: http://www.liveplasma.com/ is also interesting but similar to Kartoo and Litterature map.
Some e-commerce websites have also implemented innovative ways of searching, you may want to have a look at Etsy.com and Like.com.
Thanks for the tip about Brightclick Parson.
I have not been impressed with any of the SE's stated above. Flashy dashy UI's just dont do it for me. I need information fast, and these se's fail on that front.
Brian are they rendering slow for you?
Thanks for these. I'll have to have a play around to see if their design gives improved functionality, or whether it is simply snazzy for the sake of being so
It can be discussed if this is a "true" search engine, but one project I truly like is http://www.trueknowledge.com/ ...
At this stage more of a toy to play with, but hopefully some day truly useful (I believe in it!)
Thanks for the shout out, Corvida.
If anyone is wondering what search engine the editor of AltSearchEngines (over 1,500 posts on search engines) thinks is the coolest - that's easy.
http://taggalaxy.de
There are few instructions - it can do more than you might think. Go full screen, click and drag, double click, experiment.
How about a simpler approach, like an easier-on-the-eyes google search that saves energy? Goobony (Google+Ebony) does it for me with it's nice gothic look. Really fast results too. http://www.goobony.com
I don't know how to put this. Search engine is supposed, say, find something I'm looking for. For foreign (finnish) searches the hits were mostly irrelevant and even english searches didn't go as expected. There is a good reason why google is the most used search engine and it is not the user interface.
Searchme blows my mind! Thanks for the heads up.
As far as search I use, i've come across (via seth godin) timetube by dipity, for visually better video searching (chronological and hierarchical): http://www.dipity.com/mashups/timetube?query
Thanks again.
http://rollyo.com/ has been flagged by firefox 3.0 as an attack site.. are they looking into this?
How about this CSE on Technology http://technologysearchengine.org
One can refine search results by various lables esp Top Tech blogs label is useful
I will say lijit because despite the fact that I harvest less pages myself than all this website boot, it's probably a good value for a few person.
I am the search index.
I use http://www.pintarget.com
It's uses information it learns about you in the social network side of the site to help rank results towards you.
You can also convert a search into a researcher and have the site inform you when new results have been found for you.
Well, you don't realy forgot communipedia, because it's in a stealth modus.
I think we build the first realy social search. The index is only build by social networks.
Please ask me, if you like an invite code.
Thanks
marco
This summer I've been working as an intern at TigerLogic. I joined this team because I think our ChunkIt! search tool could really change the way that people find information on the web. ChunkIt! takes the results and countless links from any search engine or Web site and highlights your keywords in relevant “chunks” - making it easy and fast to get the information you need, without a lot of searching or clicking. It’s in beta now, so check it out and give us your feedback at: www.getchunkit.com .
I have been testing http://www.youbundle.com
the last few months. Its very simple and won't win any points for flash - but the implementation is just useful in a practical way that can be used day to day.
Think you are missing a great website. Look at Pintarget (https://www.pintarget.com) seems to really help streamline a search.
what about cuil? and what about google social changes "beta test"? searchme don´t work as I want is great to find pictures of print screens but not to naviage.
I Just love searchme.com
Some of the things that need improvement are:
- The search box could do with predictive text
- The search box sometimes stalls mid type
- The preview results need to have a zoom function
- Clicking a result opens a new browser tab
http://business-vs-technology.blogspot.com
I favor the following general trends:
- new interfaces and visualization related to search at other screens beyond the computer (http://www.idesktop.tv/)
- vertical search engines at the internet for different purposes like shopping and b2b
- search engines and tools used within enterprises for professional usage and information management
this will be accompanied technologically by:
- semantic features to narrow results maybe by something like a tuner (http://www.oamos.com) and visualization by clusters
- social networking features and the integration for collaboration
q&a se might be useful sometimes, but answering someone I would describe beyond searching for something
This SearchMe engine seems to be building quite a buzz - and I suppose most of it is due to its Cover Flow interface. But if you digg deeper, it does execute *some* searches better than Google in terms of relevancy and timeliness - others not so much.
There's still some bugs in the Cover Flow - at one point it froze!