Two Search Engines (Besides Google)

Search Engines

We should remember that Google did not invent the search engine . Prior to Google , there was Yahoo ! Search , Altavista , Excite and other search competitors . However , it is widely accepted that it is a combination of technology and usability that allowed Google to come on top the search engine war . At a time when Yahoo ! was filling its front page with a myriad of services , Google 's front page remained clean and simple allowing people to do the one thing they come to Google for - searching the web - quickly and efficiently

. This was a successful strategy for Google . As of October 2007 , Google had a 54 share of the US . Yahoo came in second with 19 .5 with MSN /Live Search at third with 12 (Burns , 2007

While Google is the clear leader , there are still other alternatives to Google search . In this , we examine two alternatives to Google search , mainly Yahoo ! Search and MSN /Live as these are the closest competitors to Google . We shall examine how they perform against Google based on measurable , quantifiable metrics as well as by comparing the level of satisfaction one gets from using these two other search engines

Even if Google is the undisputed king , there are also reasons to try and get a second opinion ' from another search engine . Studies show that about half of the pages in a search engine 's index exist only in that search engine . This means that even if Google may have the largest index size of all search engines , that index size is still not a representative copy of the contents of the Web . Combing through two search engines allows one to search through a larger percentage of the web . Additionally , a user may choose other search engines over Google due to the presence of some features

There are four main criteria for judging search engines (Barker , 2003 First is the search engine 's database . How large is the database ? How updated is it ? What kinds of documents does the database contain ? We should not be surprised that Yahoo search , as a part of the Yahoo ! Web portal has many traces of its web portal mother . Aside from the usual web , images and news searches , Yahoo search also has audio , local , and shopping databases . While Google also has some of these features , the portal side of Yahoo provides a lot of information for these Yahoo databases . The Yahoo ! Directory is also an important strength of Yahoo search . Live also has images , video , audio , etc databases but because it is the youngest of the three search engines under study , we can expect its databases to be the smallest among the three (Notess , 2003 . However I think it is safe to assume that with the backing of Microsoft , Live 's database can be competitive with Yahoo ! and Google if given enough time .The next criteria for judging search engines is the capabilities of the engine itself . Some of these capabilities are the ability for the search...