NEW relaunch of our forums!

NEW AltSearchEngines conference!

NEW Top 100 Alts list for June 2008! [more after the fold]

NEW staff writer Rafi Farber!

NEW Mobile Search expert Peggy!

NEW custom Weblin avatar!

NEW AltSearchEngines podcasts!

NEW ASE widget gallery!

NEW archives display!

NEW AltSearchEngines Stealth site!

NEW AltSearchEngines' mobile site!

NEW sponsors, and old sponsors!

NEW my favorite post of the year,

and much, much, much more!

Please join us on Monday as we kick off our second year!!

*ok, this one's not true. Try MSN Live.

• Session 1: Social Media Marketing Fundamentals
• Session 2: Linkbait - Chumming for Traffic on Social Media Sites
• Session 3: Extra! Extra! The Social News Sites
• Session 4: A Marketer‚Äôs Guide to Social Bookmarking & Tagging
• Session 5: Keynote Q & A with Joshua Schachter of del.icio.us & Garrett Camp of StumbleUpon
• Session 6: Effectively Leveraging Social Networking
• Session 7: Evangelist - The Marketer‚Äôs Role in SMM
• Session 8: Micro Communities
• Session 9: Wikipedia, Yahoo! Answers, and Answer Sharing
• Session 10: Final Session - Wikipedia Clinic

In fact we're launching AltSearchEngines with the latest edition of The Top 100, in which Charles has chosen not one, but two Search Engines of the Month!

So what is the remit of AltSearchEngines? Its approach will be to expand coverage of search engines to include the hundreds of alternative / niche search engines. While the editorial attitude will not be "anti-Google", it will certainly be "pro-alternative search engines" - a showcase of cutting edge innovation. Our goal for AltSearchEngines is to make it the definitive destination for everything related to alternative search engines - over 1,000 of them! AltSearchEngine's motto: "The most wonderful search engines you've never seen".

You can subscribe to AltSearchEngines with this RSS feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/AltSearchEngines

Check out the new site and in particular the June edition of the Top 100 Alternative Search Engines!

• Disruptive Technologies & Innovation
• Google and OpenSocial
• Next-Level Discovery Panel
• Enterprise 2.0 (Andrew McAfee)
• Web 2.0 ‚ÄúMade of People‚Äù (Ross Mayfield)
• Customer Reach vs. Vendor Grasp (Doc Searls)
• Discussing Attention (Esther Dyson)
• Defragging Identity (Dick Hardt)

There are more posts over on AltSearchEngines.

The reason ReadWriteWeb has made this decision is to focus on building and extending our core ReadWriteWeb brand. The first fruits of this strategy were the Enterprise Channel (launched in August) and our new Jobwire product (launched last week). We have more channels and products in the pipeline.

A note about ReadWriteTalk, our podcast show. As it was not a network blog, but an extension of ReadWriteWeb, it will continue to be part of our business. Sean Ammirati will continue to host the show.

Stay tuned for more channels and products under the ReadWriteWeb brand.

Hat-tip to Quintura Blog, Center Networks and The Inquisitr for their posts today. Also see Charles' post at AltSearchEngines.

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?

Best Search Engine Research Blog
Breakout Blog of 2007
Most Giving Search Blogger (for editor Charles Knight)

Best Search Engine Research Blog
ResourceShelf
SEO by the SEA
SEOFastStart
HamletBatista
AltSearchEngines

Breakout Blog of 2007
Dosh Dosh
BlogStorm
SEOish
AltSearchEngines
VanessaFoxNude
Tropical SEO

Most Giving Search Blogger
Bill Slawski
Aaron Wall
Charles Knight
Danny Sullivan
Barry Schwartz
Rand Fishkin
Kevin Newcomb
Tamar Weinberg
Lisa Barone

One trend that ASE editor Charles Knight is beginning to see is that some of the alts are getting larger. Charles noted: "We have always said that there are 4-5 major search engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN, AOL, Ask) and 100 Top ASE. But we may have to revisit that. Some ASE (maybe - blinkx, GigaBlast, Exalead, picsearch, Answers.com, Eurekster, Quintura - this is a new concept) seem to be growing larger than a typical ASE, but are not ‚Äúmajor‚Ä? yet either."

Exalead was chosen as the Search Engine of the Month for October - it is a Web and image search engine.

Check out the entire list and accompanying analysis over on AltSearchEngines.

The Search Engine forum is open to Alt search engines on an invitation only basis. With an introductory price of $49 per year, it will provide several benefits for its members. CEOs can have private conversations or participate in forums relevant to many alternative search engines. The monthly Top 100 Alternative Search Engines list will be posted in this forum prior to being published live on the blog. Special announcements and invitations that are not appropriate for general posting can be shared confidentially within the forum.

In the second forum, open to any reader, members can also participate in private and group forums. Special news such as private beta invites, will be offered to forum members prior to general posting. There is also a Conference Calendar with the most comprehensive display of search and tech related conferences available anywhere, with over 100 conferences world wide currently listed. Another feature is "Ask Charles" where readers can email a question directly to editor Charles Knight and receive a private email response.

The membership fee is $5.99 per month, or $49 per year. There is a 30 day free trial for all forums.

The third foum is for AltSearchEngines' international advisors who provide the global search engines and bilingual posts for the blog. While this is also by invitation, there is no fee for the international volunteers. In this way, advisors from all over the world can meet and interact in one location. A virtual United Nations of Search!

AltSearchEngines and Near-Time will be rolling out additional features during the year to continuously add value to joining the forums. ReadWriteWeb readers can click here to sign up for the 30 day free trial.

A Newsweek article makes the case for an alternative search engine to usurp Google and become the dominant 3rd generation search engine. Our own Charles Knight, from R/WW Network blog AltSearchEngines, features prominently in the article:

"If Google has been able to crush its search competition, it's not because it has perfected the art and science of Web searching. Far from it. Google is what the industry calls a "second-generation" search engine. First-generation engines like AltaVista found Web pages containing words that matched the user's search words. Google's innovation was to further rank a Web page by the other pages that link to it, on the somewhat shaky assumption that if a page is much-linked-to, it must be useful. Charles Knight, an analyst who runs the AltSearchEngines Web site, notes there's a plethora of good ideas for what a third-generation engine might bring to the party, and no shortage of companies trying to prove those ideas. "Each has shown they can do some aspect of a search better than Google can," says Knight."

Can one of the up-start startups usurp Google in the next generation of search? It'd be a brave person to bet against Google, given its resources and reputation for innovation. But the Newsweek article highlights very well that search isn't 'solved' yet and the switching costs to try another search engine are low. And so in those respects, Google is indeed vulnerable to a greater search technology coming along and wooing millions of users.

If you want to cover your bases and see what the Next Big Thing in search may be, I suggest you subscribe to AltSearchEngines! ;-)

It's true that Meta search engines can aggregate more content (horizontally) and also more specialized content sources (vertically - such as video across a range of video platforms like YouTube, Metacafe, etc). But on the other hand, they need to be up to the task of filtering all this extra content - e.g. presenting the results with a suitable UI and having the ability to weed out duplicates. Check out AltSearchEngines for more on this topic.

Here's how The Search Race works:

1) You need to sign up for a free Search Race account before you can vote.

2) You can vote for as many search engines as you like, but you cannot vote for a single search engine more than once.

3) You can submit new search engines.

4) The Search Race will continue until we get to the Search Engine of the Year.

The AltSearchEngines' Get Together (by invitation only)

When?

Monday, April 21st, from 7am to 5pm

Where?

Downtown San Francisco, CA (address will be advised upon registration)

Why?

Because mainstream Search conferences cater to the major search engines.

Agenda:

7:00 - 9:00 Social Coffee
9:00 - 9:45 Keynote: AltSearchEngines
10:00 - 10:45 HealthPricer with Spock and SurfCanyon
11:00 - 11:45 UpTake with FriendFeed, Eurekster, OrganizedWisdom and Spock
12:00 - 2:00 Lunch on your own.
2:00 - 2:45 SeeqPod with Kosmix, Pixsy, Matchpoint, and Healia
3:00 - 3:45 TBA
4:00 - 4:45 Powerset, Cognition, BooRah, EEGGI and True Knowledge

How much?

So far this is a free event thanks to the generosity of our sponsors:

Gold Sponsor - SeeqPod
Silver Sponsor - UpTake
Bronze Sponsor - HealthPricer
GoPubMed

Dress code:

Jeans to business casual. "Suits" will be turned away at the door.

Errata:

Search Engines - Please plan on bringing at least 50 business cards.

Contact information:

Charles Knight
Charles@ReadWriteWeb.com

This week AltSearchEngines also published a 3 part series defining a) What is a Search Engine? (an article by Nitin Karandikar), b) What is Not a Search Engine? (by Kaila Colbin) and finally c) What is an Alternative Search Engine? (by ASE editor Charles Knight). The third article by Charles explains more of his motives behind the Top 100 List. He notes the Monthly winners to date: GoshMe, KoolTorch, AfterVote, Quintura, KartOO, dialog.us, and Omgili this month (see below). Charles wrote:

Some of them did not even exist a year ago. One of my goals is to show my readers the ‚Äúlatest and the greatest‚Ä? search engine innovations. The motto for the blog [ASE], after all, is ‚Äúthe most wonderful search engines you‚Äôve never seen,‚Ä? and my favorite comment of all is, ‚ÄúWow! I didn‚Äôt even know that most of these existed!‚Ä?

The Search Engine of the Month for August is Omgili, an acronym for “Oh My God I Love It”! Charles wrote that Omgili represents everything he is trying to emphasize about what makes a good Alternative Search Engine:

a) It does something that the major search engines don’t - it searches conversations; over 100,000 boards, discussion groups, debates, opinions, forums and much more. To put it simply; you use Omgili to find out what people are saying about your topic.

b) It’s innovative and new; it was just established back in December and received seed financing this past April.

c) It is a full and complete search engine with its own crawler. But Omgili does not compete with traditional search engines that retrieve articles and web pages - it does one unique function, and it does it very, very well.

Also Omgili is a multilingual search engine; you can perform a search in any language.

Check out the August Top 100 Alt Search Engine list now on AltSearchEngines.

Any of you who have followed closely Charles Knight's Top 100 Alternative Search Engines List will enjoy this series.

• Personalization (but without storing personal info )
• Social Input / Wisdom-of-Crowds (which has its pitfalls )
• Semantic Processing: of both, the query AND the content (will this let the Search Engine find Answers that we never knew we had?)
• Parametric Input: including freshness, source and domain-specific
• Rich content types: audio, video, images, news, blogs, ‚Ķ
• UI enhancements: better visualization of results
• Findability support: notifications of interest, a database of intentions
• Follow-up: results clustering and drill-down
• Repeat queries (as Greg Linden points out )
• Trusted sources: e.g. a slider to select the level of trust, from high to low

Check out the full article and leave a comment on AltSearchEngines about what you think a search engine is - and what it'll be in the future.