2 More Alternative Engines for Savvy Searchers
For a breath of fresh air my last blog post explored three alternative search engines that offer new and innovative ways to search the web. This month I couldn’t help myself – I had to explore a couple more options available to savvy web searchers.
Now, I am not saying that the following search engines are going to by any means make a ploy to take over Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, GooHoo, or any combination. But they do offer a unique spin on different aspects of search and have again brought a refreshing new perspective to my search engine filled days.
Introducing Emmy the TasteKid. This recommendation engine offers suggestions for similar or related movies, books, and music (mostly band names as opposed to song/album titles) based on the query you enter and what other people like. In other words, Emmy helps you “explore your taste.”
You probably won’t get any real answers out of Emmy, or even the titles of CDs or books by the artist or author you are inquiring about, but TasteKid can help you build a new list of artists, movies, or perspectives to explore.
While this recommendation engine is still fairly new, it boasts an index of 22,000+ bands, 13,000+ movies, and 9,000+ books to recommend to you based on the query you enter. Some of the search results can be predictable, but TasteKid claims to be improving all the time as its social networking and wealth of music, movie, and book knowledge grows.
In my opinion, TasteKid is not the most helpful suggestion tool you will find on the web, but it is refreshing to see developers trying something new.
After debuting at the D6 conference in May, Evri recently launched in limited beta with a “search less. understand more.” slogan and philosophy. Evri is a semantic search engine, which CEO Neil Roseman, a former Vice President of Technology at Amazon, describes as being able to “help users discover related content without searching again.”
According to Frederic Lardinois at AltSearchEngines.com:
In its early stages, Evri is only going to start out with a limited set of results and possible search terms, based on what it considers to be the most popular terms and people. This approach of starting with only the most popular terms is reminiscent of Mahalo. However, unlike Mahalo, which relies on paid editors and volunteers to create its results, Evri completely relies on its algorithms to create connections between people, products, concepts, and events.
As I mentioned before, I am not expecting to see these two search engines dethrone the major engines that are routinely part of my day. However, with more and more alternative search solutions cropping up, it is nice to explore the innovative ideas that people are coming up with.
