Organising the web

Copernicus was right; the Earth does revolve around Google...um i may have miss paraphrased that...

One thing is for sure, Google has boomed and all due to an endeavor to organise the vast amounts of data on the Web.

To be honest, I can't remember the last time I used a search engine other than Google to find stuff. It has so many things going for it. Simple interface, Quick loading, great results, customisable.

For the purpose of this blog, I visited a couple of other alternatives I used years ago. MSN and Yahoo and was shocked to see so much advertising :S

Yes Google does have advertising, but it is far more subtle and not so in-your-face. It doesn't appear to be as commercialised as other search engine alternatives either.

Now for the tute.

Pick my fav search engine and search. easy.

Google: "the smallest dinosaur"

First Result:
1. What Was the Biggest Dinosaur? What Was the Smallest?
17 May 2001 ... The smallest dinosaurs were just slightly larger than a chicken; Compsognathus ("pretty jaw") was 1 m (3 ft) long and probably weighed about ...
pubs.usgs.gov/gip/dinosaurs/sizes.html

Total Results: 188,000 (0.26 seconds)


Now the comparison. I picked Copernic from the list.

My first impression? ewww. any piece of software that requires me to give out my name, email etc before i can even install it gets a big thumbs down from me.

The concept though is interesting. A do-it-all program that covers net and desktop search.

My first search was exciting! lots of status bars! lists of search engines the search term was being matched against! Only downside was the speed...or lack there of. It was a pretty slow search, but I wasn't too fused as it was very much like a cross referencing meta engine.

Copernic: "the smallest dinosaur"

First Result:

1. Dinosaure. Ask.com. 98% relevance.

Total Results: 30


Ouch, that was disappointing. Only 30 results, and the first result was a "sponsored link" which in reality was a link to the ask.com engine...with the misspelled term "dinosaure" (come to think of it, it's actually the french spelling...but odd none the less)

At this time, I think ill stick with Google ;)