Leading Web Search Engines

Engines described on this page are popular enough to be able to claim market share. However, Google dominates: 71% in the United States, at least 80% in Canada, and 76% worldwide. Google, Yahoo and Bing respond to keyword searches by matching on terms, and ranking results according to algorithms that are a mix of link-analysis, occurence and placement of words, and possibly some popularlity analysis. All, however, are looking to semantic search technology to understand the "meaning" of words better and expand beyond exact match. Ask has possibly staked its future on the semantic approach.

Also on this page are a couple of independents - Exalead and Cuil.

On the next page we look at search tools that are using more natural language processing or are significantly different in handling.

Ask.com

Ask.com had a personality change in 2008 as it re-focused itself on being a question-answering service. It's actually reasonably good at coming up with answers through web search and being able to gather questions and answers through its Q&A. Some semantic technology is involved that goes beyond merely matching on keywords. It has a variety of search tools that includes web search, news, images, video, blogs. Maps and directions are provided from Microsoft. Most notably, Ask is quite good at recognizing the standard, ready-reference type of question to deliver targeted answers such as for definitions, directions, and biographies of famous people.

Bing (bing.com)

Microsoft introduced Bing in the spring of 2009 with the tag line - "When it comes to decisions that matter, Bing & Decide". The look was fresh and appealing, and came with many nice handling features. Among these is the categorizing and grouping of web search results on general topics to help searchers "decide" what to do next. These show mainly for Travel, Health, and Shopping searches. Ranking shows authoritative sites first in most cases, product display has prices and reviews. On the whole it is better for consumers, but Bing still has a strong enough syntax to meet the needs of other searchers. Read the FAQ help page.

Bing also has excellent search interface for images, videos, and maps.

There is a Canadian Bing - bing.ca - but it does not have Travel, Twitter, or the Shopping components.

Cuil.com (pronounce as Cool)

"Cuil is an old Irish word for knowledge. For knowledge, ask Cuil"

Cuil was launched in 2008 as the world's biggest search engine. Its founders included some from Google. Its edge was going to be an ability to examine the context of words to establish their relevance to a search query. Initially it didn't do this well, but that has changed.

Today categories provide context and specifics: they are well developed and include sub-categories with examples. Scroll over the links to get previews of top results. Try this with arctic exploration. But it doesn't do well with more specific queries such as where did john franklin die. For this, go to Ask.com for the answer.

On some queries, Cuil will show a timeline. Scroll across to see events and read the brief overview. Try this for the northwest passage. Mapline for places relevant to the topic accompanies the timeline. If the topic is very current, there might also be streaming real-time news.

Cuil can be connected to Facebook so that you can search your network for social results at the same time, and share new discoveries.

: All the features are explained in Cuil's 4 minute video on the front pagel

Cuil is available in seven languages, including French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese and Turkish.

Exalead (www.exalead.com/search)

Exalead is a small alternative search engine. It is based in France and may have somewhat better coverage of European content. The index has been 8 billion pages for a couple of years. Most notably, Exalead has function that all other engines abandoned: accepts wildcard characters; and has a NEAR operator to require that words be within 16 words or a number you set. (See search syntax.) It can pick out related terms for a search and will show groupings by filetype, language and country. The Advanced Search is a guide to creating more targetted searches. Clicking on Preview shows a dated copy of the cached page.

Google (www.google.com)

Google! made its name by ranking sites according to who links to whom. A site matters if many sites link to it, and it matters more, if important sites link to it. Being listed at Yahoo, for example, raises the ranking. But Google also interprets what the site is about from the text on the page and the text in the links (anchors) on the other pages, and it is fairly smart at distinguishing meaning according to context.

It has the largest database of indexed pages including many non-web files (pdf, doc, xls, flash, and several others). Google has been growing this by deep indexing of sites and developing relationships with publishers to expand Google Scholar and Google Books.

Show Options, introduced in 2009 as a link on the search results page, offers new ways of viewing results: with more text, with images, with more shopping information, on a timeline, through a wonder wheel of related searches. More is expected in 2010.

Google has many other tools for enhancing your searching - toolbar, web search history and personalized search (SearchWiki), and much more. As well there are many web-based applications - GMail, Talk and Google Docs. Explore Google's page of More, more, more.

SearchQuilt (www.searchquilt.com) is a meta-search engine for most things Google: web, blogs, videos, images, news, discussion (Google groups). It also throws in Amazon and eBay. It's a fast way to get "universal" results from Google.

Yahoo (search.yahoo.com)
Yahoo! Search is one of the best for search aids. It has Search Assist at the top with related searches and suggested concepts to explore, as well as top sites from the search results in the left side panel. Yahoo signed-in account holders save page and keep notes in the new Search Pad. Search results are enhanced with deep links and thumbnails of images and videos. All in all, Yahoo is pleasant to use.

Yahoo also is very good at pulling up answers through its shortcuts to specialized databases. Review the list of shortcuts and pick out some favourites.

There will be changes in 2010 as it switches to the Microsoft index as part of the Microsoft Yahoo partnering agreement, but it will retain control of the search interface.