[WEB4LIB] Do we need 2 googles?

[Julia Schult]

Do we need another Google?  Based on what I've been running into lately, yes
we do.

It seems each engine works as a favorite for me for a few months until it gets
slower or has more dead links, or something faster comes along, and then I
move on.  Google has had perhaps more staying power because they allow you to
connect to a cached version of a page if the link itself is now outdated.

For several months my favorites have been Google and Northern Light, which
compliment each other because of the different ways they search and present
pages.  However, these things work in phases, and it seems as if Google is
going through a phase of having outdated links.  I will probably go to
Raging.com for a while, until they have some similar problem.  And thank you
all for pointing out ixquick; it is going to be a new favorite for me!

Joe Barker wrote:

> I've heard that AltaVista put Raging.com up because Google was drawing
> away so much business.  Whether this is factual, I wonder if the world
> needs another search engine that ranks by links to sites.
>
> Google is one of my favorite places to start most searches, because its
> ranking so often brings up what I'm looking for.  Ixquick is equally good
> as a place to start, and it provides a different type of information,
> because its ranking synthesizes how all its search engines rank.
>
> The downside of Google searching is that it reflects not so much content -
> exact words on the page - as it reflects what others think of a site,
> perhaps based on content, perhaps based on many other factors.  This is
> useful, but it also brings up a large quantity of frequently visited sites
> that pretty scary, from the point of view of reliability.
>
> What we need is more heft for the difficult topics, where you want an
> aspect of topic, or where the words are pretty common and phrases
> don't zero in very well.
>
> I don't think Raging.com is heading in this direction, and it will be hard
> for it to surpass Google.  If it does, do we need it?  For what types of
> saerches?
>
> AltaVista advanced search, with its sorting/filtering/ranking sub-search,
> it one of the best next places to go for harder topics.  Northern Light is
> another.  Infoseek would be if its database were larger.  Copernic as a
> metasearcher that allows refining (sub-searching) is also powerful
> (http://www.copernic.com -- you download it for free).
>
> I'm pleased with what Raging.com did with my own ego search, but that
> doesn't mean much.  I know where I am.  For more about good places to
> start and next places to go as a search strategy, I suggest the page and
> tutorial found starting at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/Help/search.html
>
> Do we need another google?
>
> Joe Barker
> Web Instruction Program Coordinator
> Teaching Library, UC Berkeley

--
---Julia E. Schult
Access/Electronic Services Librarian
Elmira College
Jschult at elmira.edu