Are you happy with your search engine?

It is amazing to me having watched the internet change and evolve over the years! I am 22, I started using the internet when I was 14. At that time I had to go to my friends house to use the internet or use the one at school. My buddy had AOL with a 33.6 MODEM. School had Netscape on these really old and slow computers. Anyways....I remember using AOL all the time at my buddies house, going into chat rooms and using IM. I remember AOL throwing fits over questionable software people used at the time called Faders (Made the text do cool things in AOL chat rooms). I remember using Webcrawler as my primary serach engine at the time, and I remember Geocities was much better!
As time progressed I started using Mamma.com as my search engine...I then saw the era where MP3's and ROMs and such were really big for people who knew about them and were traded without fear....I then Saw the rise and fall of Napster which brought attention to MP3's and ROM and other little programs to the rest of the world. This destroyed the era of Trading this stuff without fear and a lot of devoted web pages faded out of exsistance. I now use google as my search engine I now have to worry about spyware and adware taking ove my computer. I now find it much mroe difficult to find things that I am looking for. I also now use a cable modem (since 1998) and have stopped chatting so much online. I play more games online then anything else I do. I have seen the amount of online games skyrocket (Although I still love stracraft on battlenet).

The interenet is changing rapidly, who know what the next major search engine will be? Who know what big thing (Like napster) will gain public awarness and start some big revolution that will chagne the internet that much more. Who knows what kind of new threats and attacks we will have to worry about in the future. I can tell you one thing for sure...Back in 1996 I could never have imagined all of these chagnes.

Ah, memories.....
I hope google can pull themselves together a little more and remain topdog for a couple more years anyways.

Google has become a victim of their own dominance, their search results are easily modifiable by determined bloggers and paying advertisers. As others have previously mentioned in these posts, I've learned to construct my queries carefully to minimize the trash responses, but it can still be frustratingly useless.

But, I still think it's a brilliant tool for searching usenet archives or for finding images on the net. The usenet archives alone have solved the majority of system or application problems I've had, and resolved many arguments with my friends about lyrics for obscure, forgotten songs... That makes it worth it's weight in gold...!

Personally, I miss the days when Yahoo! solved all of my web search requirements and Google was just something I experimented with... I also remember thinking Google would never hold up against Webcrawler, so what do I know...? :D

Long story short, your choice of search engine is going to depend on the kind of info you search for regularly. The only way to really know is to try them out, some will be better than others and none of them will be perfect.

Sorry for the ramble...!

Cheers,
KV

I guess I should weigh in with my preference:

AltaVista

Back when the web first became available to the masses I observed the following about the various search engines:

WebCrawler (contrary to it's name) was the fastest

Yahoo was the best organized

AltaVista found the most and the most obscure (the main reason I still like it)

Lycos and others were middle of the road and were (at least it seemed to me at the time) trying to be like Yahoo: a portal.

You see, it seems to me that the popularity of Yahoo, Lycos, and Google is that you can set them up as your Home page, and they are your portal to, well, everything on the net... they are well organized for the average or newer user.

But, IMHO, that is why I try to steer clear. I don't want a 'window on the web'... I just want to search. And I want a search engine that will go to the farthest reaches (as the Lycos ad's would have you believe they do).

Ironically, when Yahoo first became popular, they were actually using AltaVista.

AltaVista has begun to tick me off lately, though, because they are offering 'prime real estate' on their search results pages to paying advertisers... you know, the 'sponsored' search results. Get out of my face please. And, again, all the savvy non relevant sites have figured out how to pay to get to the top of the search results.

Speaking of Savvy... there was a search site called SavvySearch which ran bulk searches using several of the most prevalent search engines at the time (sounds like what you folks here have ben saying about 'dogpile'). Those are okay.. if you're getting paid to investigate every picayune little possibility; but you run the risk of running head on into the dreaded 'information overload' we were warned about in the 80's.

Though I haven't used it in several years, Copernic used to be (IMO) one of the best search tools available.

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Originally posted by Murray S.
I use www.dogpile.com as a first choice for a search engine. Hardly use Google anymore at all.

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Is there a good comparison site for Dogpile vs. Google vs. Yahoo! ? I have been using Yahoo! about as much as Google lately but I also really like Dogpile.

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Originally posted by usil
I have recently been introduced to Dogpile which seems to be a very good search engine. Although it is not a search engine in and of itself, it brings the results of the leading search engines. It also has a toolbar and includes a running news update.

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I like Dogpile's "View by Search Engine" option. :cool:

Hello

I dont really see how google as changed :confused:. Its still as good as it was when i started using it like 2years ago, I have looked for another search engine just for interest but nothing has come up better than google.

I would like to say ask jeeves is a very good one, I somtimes use that for my home work and stuff like that.

I hope that helps you in some way or form

Wizz Kid

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Originally posted by wizz kid13
I have looked for another search engine just for interest but nothing has come up better than google.

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Have you ever tried Dogpile's metasearcher? I just uninstalled my Google Toolbar today and replaced it with Dogpile's. So far, I am very impressed with the Dogpile Toolbar's flexibility/configuration options (as opposed to the Google Toolbar).

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Originally posted by DuaneB
KartOO might be the strangest search engine. But, I've used it and it works quite well.

http://www.kartoo.com/en_index.htm

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I've only used KartOO a couple of times but, so far, it seems like the "Bizzarro" Search Engine. Intriguing but, really, why??

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Originally posted by zipulrich
Here's a list of fairly specialized search engines. Some of the links may have died by now, but it's still a resource I use.

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I have barely begun to scratch the surface of this amazing resource. Do you mind telling us which search tools you use most? Thank you for sharing!! :cool: