Yahoo! Answers is service that allows visitors to submit questions to Yahoo!’s user base in the hopes that someone already knows what you’re looking for or at least where to find it.

Aside from being able to ask questions to the Yahoo! community, it also indexes all it’s answers for others to search through as well.  Essentially it becomes a human powered search engine that complements Yahoo!’s user base.  The only difficult part… anyone can answer questions with little to no oversight.

The True Semantic Search Engine

So, there’s a lot of talk around the web these days about semantic search engines.  Essentially, trying to teach a computer to think like a human.  However, that technology is obviously not quite ready yet.

Case in point is a search I did the other night while watching Saturday Night Live.  There’s a new group called “Kings of Leon” as the musical guest, but unfortunately they don’t tell you the name of the songs.

So, I pulled up a few search engines to see if I could find the names of the song.  Naturally I did a search for “What songs did Kings of Leon play on SNL?”  However, there were two problems with the “mechanical” search engines I tried; 1. The event was happening right now (recency) and 2. I was asking it a question (relevancy)

The recency issue is a problem because it takes time for search engines to index all the sites on the web.  If the event happened minutes ago, there’s a good chance the sites with that info haven’t been indexed yet.

The relevancy issue is another problem all together.  Since most search engines are still keyword based, when I searched for “What Songs did Kings of Leon Play on SNL?” it only pulled out the keywords; Songs, Kings of Leon, and SNL.  Needless to say, I found a lot of information I was looking for, but not the question I was asking.

So, I decided to click on over to Yahoo! answers… low and behold, other people had the same question and I was able to find it immediately.  (btw, it was “Use Somebody” and “Sex on Fire“)

Conclusion

If you’re looking for a hard to find question or one that might be a little too complicated for the Mechanical Search Engines out there, add Yahoo! Answers to your browser.  It’s a great resource and an alternative to the alternatives.

Now, I typically don’t like to profile tabbed style search engines… meaning, search engines that don’t have their own results, just display search results from other sites.  However, Search.io is rather unique because of it’s scale.  Instead of just searching through the major search engines like Google or Yahoo!, Search.io goes way beyond and also allows you to search for CSS galleries, fonts, blogs, video, lyrics, recipes, and on, and on and on.

Since there are so many different options avaialable, we’re only the browser search plugin for “search engines”… however, I recommend you check out the rest of the site for other options.

The design

Since the search results are other search engines I’m going to focus more on the design and user interface.

The first thing you’ll notice when you arrive at the homepage is the roll-over list of search engines available.  Now, while I love that it’s a rollover and not a click to get the list, I do have one issue with it… Right now, I’m on small, but probably average user screen.  However, the list is actually cut off by the browser so I can’t see all the search engines available.  It would be nice to have an auto-scrolling drop down… or I could just get a bigger laptop :)

Once you find the search engine market you’re looking for, you’re brought to a search results page that is of course… tabbed.  One of the interesting little features is the ability to switch tabs with an “alt” key command.  While this is an interesting little feature, I have to wonder how useful it is.  Considering the time it takes to read the key combination, find the alt key and the number… um, wouldn’t it be just as easy to click the mouse?  Just my opinion I guess.

Lots of Options

As I said above, the only reason I added this search engine is because of the shear amount of search engines and markets to choose from.  From even a designers perspective, many of the options are extremely useful to my day to day life.  I would list them all there, but there’s just too go on.  Plus, again, I can’t see all the results because of the smaller screen size.

If you have a chance, I recommend you  hop on over and give it a look.  Especially if you’re on a monitor with a screen size greater than 1024×768. :)

Conclusion

If you’re like me and spend a lot of time using different search engines for different jobs and queries, I recommend you give Search.io at try… It may save you some time.

We had a lot of unique search engines this week.  We started off with RedZee.com… a visual search engine with an animated Red Zebra for a Mascot instead of a logo.

We also reviewed a few meta search engines in the results.  One of which is Ixquick.com.  When I first thought of a “meta search” engine, my impression was that they would search site meta data like keywords, description, and other information in the head of the document.  instead, the reference to a meta search engine has to do with referencing meta information in major search engines like Yahoo! and MSN.

The Week of September 14th, 2008 Thru September20th, 2008

RedZee.com - A Visual Search Engine with “Character”
Ask.com - A Feature Loaded Alternative Search Engine
Yokel.com - Search For Products From Local Stores
Ixquick.com - A Meta Search Engine With Privacy Credentials
Searchii.com - An Attractive, Web 2.0 Styled Search Engine

Searchii got it’s start as a (relatively) local search engine that provided accurate results for New Zealand web sites.  Once they honed in their algorythms to work with just New Zealand based sites, they expanded the search to other countries and eventually the web as a whole.

We’re currently only providing the international search engine as a browser search plugin, however… if you’re a Kiwi or from Ireland, Australia, or the United Kingdom, Searchii.com does provide local results for you as well.

The Design

Now, I have to say that this is a very appealing site design and very easy to read.  The results are well laid out and the color scheme is very mute and well matched tones. (But, I’m a big fan of Blue, so I might be a little biased)

The Results

Aside from it’s own search engine results gathered through it’s “bumby” crawler, Searchii also provides Meta Search data.  Meta Search data is another way of saying that the site aggregates search results from other sites to enhance it’s own listings.

This does provide some rather interesting and useful search results, on par with other Alternative Search Engines found across the web.

The Conclusion

So, whether you’re a Kiwi or just looking for a good solid alternative search engine, give Searchii a try and add it to your list of browser search plugins.

Unlike other consolidation or aggregation search engines that just rehash the results from several of the major search engines, Ixquick takes this one step further by adding results from social media, news, and directory sites.

The Design

Now, Ixquick isn’t going to win any beauty contests, but the search results are well organized and easy to read.  However, I do have to mention that the site looks like it was designed circa 1996 and hasn’t been touched since. (the earth image behind the logo is an especially 90’s touch)

The design is pretty standard… titles, links, and a short paragraph or intro from what looks like the meta data description of the site.

The Search Results

All the design side aside, let’s talk about the actual search results and sites it returns itself.

One interesting thing about Ixquick.com is it not only consolidates the search results from major engines and sites, it actually ranks the your results based on it’s popularity at other sites.

For example, let’s say you do a search for this site; “addoursearch”.  The first result on Ixquick.com is www.addoursearch.com, because it’s the first result on 10 other search engines.  This is demonstrated by the use of a set of star icons next to each result.  The more stars, the more results are found on other search engines.

This approach to ranking the search results can be rather useful considering each search engine will present different results based on their own algorythms.  So, in other words… it takes the group concensus as to what is the best result.

Privacy

One thing I’d like to mention is the sites privacy credentials.  Since you’re searching other sites like Yahoo!, MSN, or Ask through the ixquick interface.  This way, you don’t have to worry about the other sites recording your search data, IP address, and other possible information.

In addition to the “proxy-search” approach to privacy, Ixquick also claims that they delete all your information - like cookies, history, and ip address - once you leave the site.

The combination of these privacy features has won the site the European Privacy Seal.  To be honest I’m not sure what that means… but, it sounds official.

Conclusion

So, if you’re looking for a good aggregating search engine, concerned about privacy, and really love the 90’s… give Ixquick.com a try.  See how you like it for yourself.

While the search engine seems to focus on the major big-box type stores, it does include a few mom-and-pop sites and stores in the area… but, the lack of truly local stores might be a result of my location (Duluth, MN) than anything else.  It would be interesting to give it a try in some of the more larger metropolitan areas.

The Results

Most of my search test search queries came back with pretty good results.  However, the search engine appears to be a keyword based application rather than any type of semantic results.

Case in point is a search I did for “strollers”.  The search engine returned products and stores that included the term “strollers” in it’s title.  However, the term can have multiple meanings, but this can easily be circumvented by adding additional search terms.

The Design

The interface of the search results is pretty standard… a set of search results on the left, refining terms on the right, and advertising on the bottom.

The only thing that could be considered a little distracting is the amount of advertising on the bottom and the placement of the paging links.  In order to see the next page you essentially have two options:  Scroll all the way down past the advertising or scroll back up to the top of the results to get to the next page.

Once you perform a keyword search on Yokel, the site returns listings grouped by store including the distance from your current location in Miles (sorry metric users!)

In some cases, the results will also include a picture of the item and it’s associated price.

In addition to the search terms, Yokel also provides you with the ability to narrow you search terms based price, brand, and store category to name a few.  This is a pretty standard feature among shopping search engines and can be very useful when searching for a product.

Conclusion

So, in closing… Yokel.com is a very basic, but well designed shopping search engine with a great approach.  I think with today’s current and seemingly ever increasing gas prices, localized search engines such as this will become a key part of people’s shopping rituals.

The search results are rather impressive and compete on a level playing field with major search engines.  However, Ask.com does provide some advanced and unique features only found on this site.

The following paragraphs detail some of the unique features and my impressions of the interface.

Results

While Ask.com does return some impressive search results, it still has a tough time competing with other major search engines such as Google or Yahoo!.

So, instead of trying to beat the big guys with index size, they seem to have taken a different route by offering additional and rather useful features.

One of those features is a preview option, displayed by a small binocular icon next to each result.  By hovering your mouse over this little icons, a small preview pop-up will display, similar to the Snap.com preview feature we use on this site.

This pop-up also has an additional feature by means of a Compete traffic snapshot that will tell you the unique visitors to each site.

Another useful feature of the search results is a filter menu on the left hand side that will allow you to narrow, expand, or discover other search queries similar to the one you’re currently looking at.

This is a feature that is common among other search engines such as Clusty.com as well as other alternative search engines.

Search Types

As with most search engines today, Ask.com offers specialized search results for images, blogs, video, and news among others.  There is however one feature that I’d like to highlight and that’s the “city” feature.

The “City” option in Ask.com, is a nice little feature that allows users to search local stores and services.  By typing in a search query, such as a business or keyword - then providing Ask.com with the location you’re looking for - Ask.com will return the local search results along with an integrated map with the location of your results.

Other search engines such as Google and Yahoo! do offer a localized search engine, however Ask.com is one of the first to provide these results front and center.

Ask Eraser

One the big topics in the search world today is privacy.  There’s a lot of controversy around the amount of information search engines are currently tracking and storing in their database. Many browsers such as Google’s Chrome, Internet Explorer 8, and soon-to-be added features of FireFox 3.

Ask.com has incorporated this trend it into their search engine by a feature called “ask eraser”.

By enabling the Ask Eraser feature, your browsing history, search terms, and cookies will be erased from Ask’s databases.  They do however have a small disclaimer that certain information is stored on 3rd party databases such as advertisers.

Conclusion

Ask.com is a good, solid alternative search engines to the major players.  It offers many features and privacy options you won’t find on other, more popular search engines.  So if you’re looking for a change of pace, give Ask.com a try.

The one word I would probably describe this site, would be character… literally. The first thing you notice when you visit the homepage, is very large flash animation of a Red Zebra character.  Hence the name “red zee”.

While it does provide you with a very attractive and enjoyable interface, i did find a few quirks with the search results and usability that might present challenges for some visitors and will detail those in the following paragraphs.

The Interface

As I mentioned above, this site is all about character.  From the logo, the animation, to the scrolling features… it’s a very well thought out and designed site. The search results are presented in an arching, scrollable gallery that users can click and drag to see additional results.

Since the site doesn’t provide you with a standard, list type search results page, the site first starts out by presenting you with a small pop up screen that informs you how to interact with the interface.

Once you find a site that you’d like to explore, you need to double click on the result to see the web page.  This is a different approach and one that some people might have a little difficulty working. However, considering the click and drag interface for the search results, this is the obvious way to handle it.

After you’ve double clicked on a page you’d like to explore, you’re presented with a framed page with a set of tabs on the top and the resulting page in the center.  This is an interesting feature, however there’s no real way (that I could see) of closing the framed page and just seeing the results.

This is one feature that I did have an issue with, considering it hampers my ability to fully interact with the site I found.   If I want to actually visit the site - without the RedZee tabs - I need open a new window and type the site in directly or do a right click and open the frame in a new page.

The Search Results

The search results and data RedZee returns are decent and provide the typical of an average alternative search engine.  One interesting thing to note, is that the search results don’t bring you past what would normally be found on the first few pages.

For example, when I did a search for “Strollers”, RedZee returned approximately 60 different sites.  However, the same search performed by Google returned over 18 million different results.

Now, this isn’t actually a bad thing, considering the majority of the search users don’t go past the first two pages… so, there’s really no reason to beyond a few dozen results.

One additional element that I would like to mention is the minimal amount of advertising on the search results page.  As a matter of fact, there’s only 1 advertising on the search results page… cleverly placed just below the arching search results gallery.

Conclusion

One of the fastest growing segments of the search genre is visual search.  Each seems to have it’s own unique style or approach to the presentation of the results.  Redzee may not be groundbreaking in it’s technology or data collection… but it definately get two thumbs up for the presentation.

The Week of September 7th, 2008 Thru September 6th, 2008

Addictomatic.com - A Topic Aggregation Site with Search Capabilities
Rowdii.com - An Easy To Use Search Engine with Social Commentary
Blinkx.com - The Web’s Most Comprehensive Video Search
BackType.com - A Search Engine for Comment(er)s
Powerset.com - The Semantic Search Engine Acquired by Microsoft

In it’s current format, Powerset currently only indexes Wikipedia and Freebase for it’s data, but they hope to expand that search to additional sites in the future.

The Data

As I mentioned above, Powerset currently only indexes two data sources; Wikipedia and Freebase.

Most people have heard of Wikipedia in one form or another.  As a matter of fact, most search queries on major databases include at least one Wikipedia entry within the first few pages.

It’s this reason Powerset decided to launch their initial offering with just Wikipedia entries.

The other source that Wikipedia will pull data from is a free online database called FreeBase.  To be honest, prior to writing this blog post, I had never heard of FreeBase.com. Freebase is a similar to Wikipedia, except that the data is free for anyone to query without having to worry about licensing rights.

Search Results and Interface

Despite the advanced technology behind the search queries, the interface itself is nothing breakthrough… but it’s good.

Once you type in your search query, you’re presented with a page broken down into multiple parts; Freebase, Factz, and Wikipedia Articles.

Freebase is the first section of the page (if available) and will provide you with a summary of your term.  For example, if you do a search for “Golden Gate Bridge”, you’re presented with a short paragraph or overview of the bridge.

The Second part is something Powerset calls Factz.  Factz is an interesting section and really shows the power of the search engine.  Powerset will pull out information it believes are facts about the search query at hand.  for example, using the same “Golden Gate Bridge” query above, Powerset shows who it’s owned by, the areas it connects and who it is maintained by.

Finally, you have a straight up search results of Wikipedia articles pertaining to the search query.

A New Owner, a New Beginning(?)

Powerset has had a lot of publicity both leading up to and after their launch to the public.  Shortly after their launch in May of 2008, the site was acquired by Microsoft.

Now, regardless of your feelings of Microsoft, the fact that they acquired Powerset so early on, tells you a lot about the technology behind the search.  Microsoft has needed some type of an edge in it’s lagging search and web presence, so anything they can do to improve their standings would be an improvement.

Conclusion

Even though powerset is just a search engine for Wikipedia at this point, I’m excited about what it will bring to the table.  Hopefully with the resources Microsoft can put behind Powerset, the search will be able to live up to the hype.