The Search Engine That's Already Better Than Google

This is a short entry because it's very late, I'm very tired, and I still have tons of unread email...

In thinking about Google's future competitively and how they might eventually fall by the wayside, I always bring up the single example of a site I consistently use to find better content than what's available through Google's SERPs. Granted, this engine doesn't operate perfectly for every query (not even close), but for me, it's become a search destination when I know the regular engines can't acceptably fulfill my needs.

Have a look at some comparative searches:

1. Furniture vs. at Google
2. Luggage vs. at Google
3. Laptops vs. at Google
4. SEO vs. at Google
5. Web Design vs. at Google
6. Politics vs. at Google
7. Shoes vs. at Google
8. Web 2.0 vs. at Google
9. Blogging vs. at Google
10. Writing vs. at Google

Yeah, I'm talking about the popular tag pages at Del.icio.us. If you look through the results above you'll see some serious patterns. Del.icio.us is:

• More timely
• More focused on what someone in my demographic might want
• Offers more high quality results
• Provides a greater variety of results (in scope)
• Doesn't always list the "best" results first
• Has some accuracy and relevance problems
• Is either 10X better or 10X worse than Google depending on what you're looking for

I think that if Googlers are looking for a threat to their dominance over the web experience, they should start with Del.icio.us. Likewise, if intelligent entrepreneurs are truly seeking a way to compete with the search giant, this is the route they should take. If Yahoo! focused some serious resources here and extended their ownership to places like Digg, Reddit & StumbleUpon, I believe they could build a social-relevance based engine that would show some pretty fantastic content.

BTW - On an unrelated topic - you need to read How to Build an Affiliate Site You Can Sell for $1M from Andy Hagans. Genius post and very smart advice, even if you don't have any desire to build an affiliate site.