This Tuesday: A Day Without Google
AltSearchEngines is asking everyone to go one day, this Tuesday (whatever your timezone may be), without using one of the major search engines; Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, or Ask. This was inspired by a similar Between The Lines experiment.
AltSearchEngines editor Charles Knight wants everyone to try one of the alt search engines in his most recent Top 100 Alt Search Engines list. Then on Wednesday, leave a detailed comment on AltSearchEngines describing how it went, and share your experience with others.
There are some ground rules:
1. All day Tuesday, June 12th, don’t use any of the 5 major search engines.
2. Avoid Meta search engines, since most of them include the major search engines.
3. Likewise, the specialized vertical search engines may be too narrowly focused.
4. Consider changing your homepage or downloading their toolbar. You can always uninstall everything and change back on Wednesday.
5. On Wednesday, leave a detailed comment on AltSearchEngines and share your experience with the rest of us. Which alt search engine did you chose? How would you rate the experience?
This is a great idea by Charles, inspired by Larry Dignan of BTL. As Charles says, the hundreds of alternative search engines out there are working very hard to get your attention, so why not give them a chance - at least for one day.
I have to admit that I haven't yet got out of the habit of using Google, and to be frank a big reason for that is that Google generally does the job for me. But on the other hand, there is a whole new world of next-generation search for me to explore - some of which might surprise me and deliver better search results. There's only one way to find out! I'm going to give this experiment a go.
I wouldn't mind getting some tips though from R/WW readers on which general alt search engines to try. I think Hakia will be my first test, but what other search engines do you recommend?
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Interesting idea! Hakia is a good choice; also, what about trying Quintura?
I can highly recommend that users try aftervote ( http://www.aftervote.com - As it still lets you see what you are 'missing' from Google as you use a alternative engine.
It's funny that both suggestions are search engines which merely reorganize results from the major ones (:.
I think it's unfair to include Ask in the "major" search engines. And, honestly, with it out of the picture, I have no idea which general purpose search engine I'd use as an alternative (:
This is a neat idea. I've decided to give it a spin. First impressions count tho', and I believe Hakia failed there.
Not being able to remember the spelling of Hakia (Its not exactly intuitive), I reverted to Google to find the search engine. My entry in Google - "haika search engine". It showed up as the fourth link (Error accounted for and all). So I went over to Hakia to find out what it might have done in such a situation. I'm disappointed to say that it wasn't able to figure out I was searching for its own homepage. In fact, nothing on the first page of results was remotely connected to Hakia. It however does provide a correction for "gogle search engine". Google automatically catches and suggests the right one though.
Time to switch search engines again.
I have an additional comment to parents - Please try out Quintura Kids with your kids
http://kids.quintura.com
The site features a kids-related interactive tag cloud for easy navigation through kids’-safe web links.
Interesting. I already default to Yahoo! so it's really a day without it. This should be fun!
Pierre
I am in!
It would be fun if most of us at least for a week refuse to use most wanted engines like Google, Yahoo, etc.
Guess I won't be coming into work at all tomorrow then... I write and manage AdWords accounts.
For me no google day means lights-off, I'm against it for sure!