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| Image Search: brighthub.com |
Search engine folklore reveals that Google must be the best way to crawl the Internet for specialized information. But if people think in terms of how majority of search engine users learned their search practices, Google’s predominance in user habits could be challenged by further exploration of the search world. There are viable alternatives to Google that were overshadowed by the cannon, and these are emerging now as geeky, sometimes circuitous, but no less effective means to go around.
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| Image Source: searchuserinterfaces.com |
There’s a certain resemblance between search engines embedded in social media and metasearch engines. The analogy may be far off, but these two search categories intersect at a crucial point. While Google has ways of dictating keyterms and prioritizing results for its large user base, metasearch engines and social media search do not discard user queries in defining results. They operate on the level of pedestrian queries, not paid specialized jargon that defines the Web content of businesses and other official institutions.
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| Image Source: pcrisk.com |
In minor search engine roles are metasearch engine sites like Metacrawler, Mamma, and mysearchresults.com. These aggregate search engine queries from major search engines like Google and allow users to refine their search terms on their own. The user filter distills search results from paid ones, such that metasearch engines are actually known for leveling the search market somewhat. Except that in revenue comparisons between them and Google, they may earn peanuts, or nothing at all.
There’s a good number of metasearch engines taken for granted by search users. Those mentioned above figure among the popular ones, while less-known sites include Seekz, iBoogie.com, and Zuula. For more about metasearch engines and the search industry, visit this Facebook page.
