Thread: An ideal search engine?

Let's entertain an interesting thought (or at least I hope it is). We're complaining a lot about Google here, but alternative engines are either going in the same direction or are just behind Google in terms of sophistication, or are not popular enough (like DuckDuckGo).

If you had enough funds to start your own search engines and implement any innovation you or your team can come up with what would it be like? How do you imagine an ideal search engine?

Hi,

That is a good question.

I think the main focus should not be on backlinks the amount you have should not matter. It would sure put the spammers out of work. Advertisements on sites would be worth more

I think it would be nice if the search were random. Meaning everyday different sites would end up on the ft page not the same sites.

Example do a search for fishing (First word that came to mind why I do not know.)

fishing - Google Search

Now tomorrow if your site was on the ft page it will not be their again till all the sites on dealing with the topic of fishing had been on the ft page

This would give everyone a chance and people would bookmark and save/revisit the sites they liked most.

Sami

I just tried to thought (not so deeply though) about it and figured that Google is already everything I need. No really.

If you know how to use it, then you will always find what you need, regardless of position where certain page ranks.

This eventually leads to conclusion that "thing" is not about search engine, but about "mind set" of the searcher (yet probably Google developed that mind set), eg I cant find what I am looking for so easy with the other search engines... This duckduckgo.com is very nice and results are quite good, probably it takes them from Google or Yahoo...

Originally Posted by Sami4u

I think it would be nice if the search were random. Meaning everyday different sites would end up on the ft page not the same sites.

Example do a search for fishing (First word that came to mind why I do not know.)

fishing - Google Search

Now tomorrow if your site was on the ft page it will not be their again till all the sites on dealing with the topic of fishing had been on the ft page

This would give everyone a chance and people would bookmark and save/revisit the sites they liked most.

An interesting idea. It would completely remove the idea of ranking and sorting by relevance, quality or any other criteria though, and may result in different users having wildly different experiences.

I suppose one way to solve that would be to make sure all of the randomized results are relevant, or beyond a certain relevancy threshold. People could also perhaps "save" certain search results so they stick next time they do a search.

It would make SEO next to impossible too, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. If the idea is to get people to save/bookmark/like you once you randomly show up to them while making it impossible to game the algorithm then true webmaster-to-user relationship is established, with a focus on quality. That would (and probably should in any case) replace SEO, or become what SEO is about.

But I don't know, it's definitely a wild idea.

Originally Posted by Hellas

I just tried to thought (not so deeply though) about it and figured that Google is already everything I need. No really.

If you know how to use it, then you will always find what you need, regardless of position where certain page ranks.

I have that feeling too, that is, I can't really say I'm having trouble finding stuff I want. Certainly not enough to make that a good reason to switch to another engine.

Originally Posted by Hellas

This eventually leads to conclusion that "thing" is not about search engine, but about "mind set" of the searcher (yet probably Google developed that mind set), eg I cant find what I am looking for so easy with the other search engines... This duckduckgo.com is very nice and results are quite good, probably it takes them from Google or Yahoo...

It might be the mindset indeed. I guess that's how an alternative search engine could win; offer a new mindset that is easily recognizable as superior. It would have to be disruptive in a similar sense that Google's simple search page and PageRank were.

About DuckDuckGo sources though, they don't draw from Google, and they use multiple other sources including Yahoo BOSS. From their FAQ:

Where do you get your results?
From over 30 sources, including DuckDuckBot (our own crawler), crowd-sourced sites (in our own index), Yahoo! BOSS, embed.ly, WolframAlpha, EntireWeb, Bing & Blekko. For any given search, there is usually a vertical search engine out there that does a better job at answering it than a general search engine. Our long-term goal is to get you information from that best source, ideally in instant answer form.

This makes it a fairly unique search engine. They just don't do all of the crawling themselves (way too expensive), but draw on other sources, and combine them in their own way.

i will go for specific niche related search .... and this is how my Malaysia Property Search Engine work

Blekko and DuckDuckGo are good alternatives to Google/Bing. I agree with Hellas that Google is the best out there. The issue that I see with Google is that they make changes without notice and leave a lot of collateral damage.

The feature I would like to see is a deeper crawl of the web and more listings than 1k.

Originally Posted by bogart

The feature I would like to see is a deeper crawl of the web and more listings than 1k.

I also would like to see more of the "hidden web" and less of the "sites I've already seen."

This could be a setting -- a simple slider bar adjusting between novelty and authority.

Originally Posted by memenode

Let's entertain an interesting thought (or at least I hope it is). We're complaining a lot about Google here, but alternative engines are either going in the same direction or are just behind Google in terms of sophistication, or are not popular enough (like DuckDuckGo).

If you had enough funds to start your own search engines and implement any innovation you or your team can come up with what would it be like? How do you imagine an ideal search engine?

Actually to me, Google is an ideal search engine. The only complaint I have is that SERPs can sometimes be a headache to rank up there for webmasters, but that's part of the fun and challenge.

I would incorporate 'round table' results, a bit similar to what Sami suggested but more like a hybrid method of educated random results.
Then, probably most important an option HOW to display result. For example: by most popular, by most linked to etc. Give the user more power.
The 'round table' results could also be displayed as such, even slowly animated and big buttons for the earlier mentioned select search results.

Google's technology is really impressive but the idea of search results showing as 10 on the first page with little control over it (yes i know there's an advanced option) is quite ridiculous.

I have made an experiment about the fact last month, I totally stopped to use google and started to use bing, yahoo and ask and also i compared the results too; actually there are some great dissimilarity i found in some case however, for some other case discrimination reduces greatly. I found bing much more closer to Google; but others are in long apart.