April 21, 2009
Alternatives to Google
(This post appears as part of our Tech Tuesday series.)
Without a doubt Google is the number one player in the area of search. Whenever your brand becomes a verb you know you've made it. But there are more than a few reasons to utilize other search engines.
Google has a bit of a bad track record in the area of free speech. They have been known to change results on their image pages to satisfy the censors in certain countries. Others are concerned with Google's scan first and ask permission second policy. And privacy advocates are concerned with Google using your personal data for targeted behavioral advertising.
So if not Google then who?
Scroogle is a terrific website that queries Google's search engine on your behalf. As a result, Google never stores a cookie on your computer and they never see your IP address.
Cuil boasts having what may be the deepest index of the web. With over 120 billion pages searched you are bound to find what you're looking for. They also boast a simple privacy policy that includes the statement, "We do not keep logs of our users’ search activity."
Kosmix has decided to throw the plain interface that Google made cool out the window. A search on the Kosmix page will return information from a wide variety of sources and mediums. You'll find info from Twitter, Reuters, Google, Facebook, YouTube, and even Ebay. Note - Kosmix's privacy policy states they do collect information such as your IP address and they do track your search activity with a cookie.
Ixquick states on their privacy page that:
In June 2006 we started to delete our users' privacy data within 48 hrs.
As of January 2009 we do not even record our users' IP addresses at all anymore.
Ixquick's biggest selling point is that they are a metasearch engine. They query 11 search sites with your request and score the results. A result is given 1 star for each search engine that places it in the top 10. More stars mean more search engines agreed on a particular result.
Finally, looking forward Twitter Search may be the next big thing as it allows you to see in real time how your keywords are being used.
Do you have issues with Google? What search engines do you use?
Posted by Staff at 06:56 AM
Category: Cuil; Google; Ixquick; Kosmix; Scroogle; Search; Search Engines; Tech Tuesday; Twitter Search; twitter