Forums > Social Discussion > Search Engine Wars

Posted: 19th Mar 2007
Matty lovvvvves google.

End of.

Posted: 19th Mar 2007
yep, ask jeeves is crap.

Google is the most popular cos its the best. I remember when i first got the internet, there was a multitude of search engines that people used. I think every one of my friends used a different one. But gradually google became more popular as we grew up and realised whatever random search engines with flashy colours we used didn't really cut it.

And i think the fact that its all just askjeeves which is behind it, makes it a marketing thing, rather than an anti-google thing.

i would have changed ***** to phallus, and claire to petey Petey

Rougie: but that's what I'm doing here
Arnwyn: what letting me adjust myself in your room?..don't you dare quote that on HoP...

Posted: 19th Mar 2007
Google changes it logo to match special days. Nothing can beat that... nothing.

Posted: 19th Mar 2007
Oh the AG (Almighty Google) the best search engine that I've ever found. Second would be Dogpile, though I haven't used that one in years.

Growing old is mandatory; growing up is NOT.
Proud member of the HoP DPS.
Sanity is a highly overrated state of mind.
I'm normal ... it's everyone else that's crazy.

Gidg

Posted: 24th Mar 2007
Mine hasn't arrived yet

The existance of flamethrowers says that someone, somewhere, at sometime said "I need to set that thing on fire, but it's too far away."

Posted: 24th Mar 2007
all gone now

This is a post by tom, all spelling is deleberate
-><- Kallisti

Posted: 25th Mar 2007
Don't like Google so much, as "if you pay munny, you raise to the top, even if your website doesn't contain any information about the subject". And even if you have MOST valuable information about something, you stay on page 275 if you're not paying/ using all the little tricks.

But I still use it, lacking a feasible alternative.

Crap search engines - to me - are more annoying than imperialistic ones...

the best smiles are the ones you lead to

Posted: 25th Mar 2007
Google....
When it started was brilliant.
But as it became more popular and added more adverts, the quality of the results became worse and worse.
I noticed a year of 2 ago that, now its actually a bit lame.

The first 3 answers from Google are adverts
and all the links on the left are adverts.
Which means that half the first results are based on paid for clicks, not whether its useful.

Try it, do tests on area's of the web you know well:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=contact+juggling&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
There are 19 links on the first page, and roughly 3/4 of them are fairly crap (well half are shops!)

For Image search Google is dreadful!
I would Try flickr.com
and for definitions, I often start with wikipedia
but almost always when I'm doing big searching I get my best stuff from other peoples link pages

OK, so here is your feasible alternative - Google without the adverts!
Its google how you remember it: Customize Google
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/743
or
https://www.customizegoogle.com/

Posted: 25th Mar 2007
Just installed that Glass... its beautiful *sniff*

The existance of flamethrowers says that someone, somewhere, at sometime said "I need to set that thing on fire, but it's too far away."

Posted: 25th Mar 2007
free t-shirts? where?

"but have you considered there is more to life than your eyelids?"

jointly owned by Fire_Spinning_Angel and Blu_Valley

Posted: 25th Mar 2007
So all the adverts are marked as that, whereas those of us who were professional SEOs back in the old days knew that with other search engines they would include paid links in the 'normal' results and you would never know.

There was one point where SEOs were shocked because you couldn't pay for the top rank on keywords of your choice - it was a big change in the market.

I'm out of the business now, but I do know that:

1) Googles adverts aren't that bad, and it's clear what are and aren't adverts.

2) After the adverts I think it is the best search out there, in that: it's not Microsoft, and I've never really liked yahoo search or ways of doing business (like selling out to governments and grassing on innocent Chinese reporters when they didn't have to)

3) As someone who advertises on google, it is a great program and much better than the old skool ways of paying for rankings.

So all in all, I don't mind them.

If you want to have a go at google, do it for censoring the results in China or any number of other things.

As for that campaign: the adverts are rubbish as google doesn't control the internet or its content - no search engine does, and in some ways no one does. When I saw them on the tube I thought it was going to be about the 2 tier internet that is being pushed for by the likes of BT, or even the fact that the US wont give up DNS management to the UN, or even something about non-Roman alphabet domain names .

Those are issues that do affect the way the internet works and in some ways how it is 'controlled'. having a go at google for being popular isn't a battle I think it worth fighting.

There's too many home fires burning and not enough trees

Posted: 25th Mar 2007
For techy-geeky stuff I usually end up searching del.icio.us. I know it isn't the primary purpose of the site, but the results can be pretty accurate.

For general search I end up on google, or wikipedia. And for Academic articles I end up on University library catalogues or on google scholar.

I like google. It works well. Although it always pays to draw from a variety of sources, hence my use of different sites/services for different purposes.

It was a day for screaming at inanimate objects.

What this calls for is a special mix of psychology and extreme violence...

Posted: 26th Mar 2007
My tee arrived in the post this morning!

Yay!



Del.icio.us looks scary! Doesn't have the uber user friendliness of google...

The existance of flamethrowers says that someone, somewhere, at sometime said "I need to set that thing on fire, but it's too far away."

Posted: 27th Mar 2007
CAN'T BEAT GOOGLE.

P.S. I don't work for google....... Or do I?

I fell down a hill once, got up then fell down it again.