At first glance, it may seem that only Yandex can be better than Google, and even that is not a fact. These companies invest huge amounts of money in innovation and development. Does anyone really have a chance not only to compete with the leaders, but also to win? Lifehacker's answer: “Yes!” There are several search engines that have succeeded. Let's look at our heroes.
What is this
This is a fairly well-known search engine with open source code. Servers are located in the USA. In addition to its own robot, the search engine uses results from other sources: Yahoo! Search BOSS, Wikipedia, Wolfram|Alpha.
The better
DuckDuckGo positions itself as a search engine that provides maximum privacy and confidentiality. The system does not collect any data about the user, does not store logs (no search history), use cookies as limited as possible.
DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information from users. This is our privacy policy.
Gabriel Weinberg, founder of DuckDuckGo
Why do you need this
All large search engines they try to personalize search results based on data about the person in front of the monitor. This phenomenon is called the “filter bubble”: the user sees only those results that are consistent with his preferences or that the system deems as such.
DuckDuckGo creates an objective picture that does not depend on your past behavior on the Internet, and eliminates thematic Google advertising and Yandex, based on your requests. With DuckDuckGo it's easy to search for information on foreign languages: Google and Yandex by default give preference to Russian-language sites, even if the request is entered in another language.
What is this
"" is a Russian metasearch system developed by Moscow State University graduates Viktor Lavrenko and Vladimir Chernyshov. It searches through the indexes of Google, Bing, Yandex and others, and also has its own search algorithm.
The better
Searching through the indexes of all major search engines allows you to generate relevant results. In addition, Nigma divides the results into several thematic groups (clusters) and invites the user to narrow the search field, discarding unnecessary ones or highlighting priority ones. Thanks to the Mathematics and Chemistry modules, you can solve mathematical problems and request the results of chemical reactions directly in the search bar.
Why do you need this
Eliminates the need to search for the same query in different search engines. The cluster system makes it easy to manipulate search results. For example, Nigma collects results from online stores into a separate cluster. If you do not intend to buy anything, then simply exclude this group. By selecting the “English-language sites” cluster, you will receive results only in English. The Mathematics and Chemistry modules will help schoolchildren.
Unfortunately, the project is not currently being developed, as the developers have transferred their activity to the Vietnamese market. Nevertheless, “Nigma” is not only not outdated yet, but in some things it still gives Google a head start. Let's hope development resumes.
What is this
not Evil is a system that searches the anonymous Tor network. To use it, you need to go to this network, for example, by launching a specialized browser with the same name. not Evil is not the only search engine of its kind. There is LOOK (the default search in the Tor browser, accessible from the regular Internet) or TORCH (one of the oldest search engines on the Tor network) and others. We settled on not Evil because of the clear allusion to Google itself (just look at the start page).
The better
It searches where Google, Yandex and other search engines are generally closed.
Why do you need this
The Tor network contains many resources that cannot be found on the law-abiding Internet. And as government control over the content of the Internet tightens, their number will grow. Tor is a kind of Network within the Network: with its own social networks, torrent trackers, media, trading platforms, blogs, libraries, and so on.
YaCy
What is this
YaCy is a decentralized search engine that works on the principle of P2P networks. Each computer on which the main one is installed software module, scans the Internet independently, that is, it is an analogue of a search robot. The results obtained are collected into a common database that is used by all YaCy participants.
The better
It’s difficult to say whether this is better or worse, since YaCy is a completely different approach to organizing search. The absence of a single server and owner company makes the results completely independent of anyone's preferences. The autonomy of each node eliminates censorship. YaCy is capable of searching the deep web and non-indexed public networks.
Why do you need this
If you are a supporter of open source software and free internet, not influenced government bodies and large corporations, then YaCy is your choice. It can also be used to organize a search within a corporate or other autonomous network. And even though YaCy is not very useful in everyday life, it is a worthy alternative to Google in terms of the search process.
Pipl
What is this
Pipl is a system designed to search for information about a specific person.
The better
The authors of Pipl claim that their specialized algorithms search more efficiently than “regular” search engines. In particular, the priority sources of information are profiles social networks, comments, lists of participants and various databases where information about people is published, such as databases of court decisions. Pipl's leadership in this area is confirmed by assessments from Lifehacker.com, TechCrunch and other publications.
Why do you need this
If you need to find information about a person living in the US, Pipl will be much more effective than Google. The databases of Russian courts are apparently inaccessible to the search engine. Therefore, he does not cope so well with Russian citizens.
What is this
Another specialized search engine. Looking for various sounds(house, nature, cars, people, and so on) in open sources. The service does not support queries in Russian, but there is an impressive list of Russian-language tags that you can search for.
The better
The output contains only sounds and nothing extra. In the search settings you can set the desired format and sound quality. All sounds found are available for download. There is a search for sounds by pattern.
Why do you need this
If you need to quickly find the sound of a musket shot, the blows of a suckling woodpecker, or the cry of Homer Simpson, then this service is for you. And I chose this only from the available Russian-language queries. On English the spectrum is even wider. But seriously, a specialized service requires a specialized audience. But what if it comes in handy for you too?
The life of alternative search engines is often fleeting. Lifehacker asked the former general director of the Ukrainian branch of Yandex, Sergei Petrenko, about the long-term prospects of such projects.
As for the fate of alternative search engines, it is simple: to be very niche projects with a small audience, therefore without clear commercial prospects or, conversely, with complete clarity of their absence.
If you look at the examples in the article, you can see that such search engines either specialize in a narrow but popular niche, which, perhaps, has not yet grown enough to be noticeable on the radars of Google or Yandex, or they are testing an original hypothesis in ranking, which is not yet applicable in regular search.
For example, if a search on Tor suddenly turns out to be in demand, that is, results from there are needed by at least a percentage of Google’s audience, then, of course, ordinary search engines will begin to solve the problem of how to find them and show them to the user. If the behavior of the audience shows that for a significant proportion of users in a significant number of queries, results given without taking into account factors depending on the user seem more relevant, then Yandex or Google will begin to produce such results.
“Be better” in the context of this article does not mean “be better at everything.” Yes, in many aspects our heroes are far from Google and Yandex (even far from Bing). But each of these services gives the user something that the giants of the search industry cannot offer.
Hello, dear readers of the blog site. , then its few users had enough of their own bookmarks. However, as you remember, it happened in geometric progression, and very soon it became more difficult to navigate in all its diversity.
Then directories appeared (Yahoo, Dmoz and others), in which their authors added and sorted various sites into categories. This immediately made life easier for the then not very numerous users global network. Many of these catalogs are still alive today.
But after some time, the size of their databases became so large that the developers first thought about creating a search within them, and then about creating automated system indexing all Internet content to make it accessible to everyone.
The main search engines of the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet
As you understand, this idea was implemented with stunning success, but, however, everything turned out well only for a handful of selected companies that managed not to disappear on the Internet. Almost all search engines that appeared in the first wave have now either disappeared, languished, or were bought by more successful competitors.
A search engine is a very complex and, importantly, very resource-intensive mechanism (this means not only material resources, but also human ones). Behind the seemingly simple , or its ascetic analogue from Google, there are thousands of employees, hundreds of thousands of servers and many billions of investments that are necessary for this colossus to continue to operate and remain competitive.
Entering this market now and starting from scratch is more of a utopia than a real business project. For example, one of the world's richest corporations, Microsoft, has been trying to gain a foothold in the search market for decades, and only now their search engine Bing is slowly beginning to meet their expectations. And before that there was a whole series of failures and setbacks.
What can we say about entering this market without any special financial influences. For example, our domestic search engine Nigma has a lot of useful and innovative things in its arsenal, but their traffic is thousands of times lower than the leaders of the Russian market. For example, take a look at the daily Yandex audience:
In this regard, we can assume that the list of the main (best and luckiest) search engines of the Runet and the entire Internet has already been formed and the whole intrigue lies only in who will eventually devour whom, or how their percentage share will be distributed if they all survive and will stay afloat.
Russian search engine market is very clearly visible and here, probably, we can distinguish two or three main players and a couple of minor ones. In general, a rather unique situation has developed in RuNet, which, as I understand it, has repeated itself only in two other countries in the world.
I'm talking about the fact that the Google search engine, having come to Russia in 2004, has still not been able to take the lead. In fact, they tried to buy Yandex around this period, but something didn’t work out there and now “our Russia”, along with the Czech Republic and China, are those places where the almighty Google, if not defeated, then, in any case, met serious resistance.
In fact, to see the current state of affairs among the best search engines on the RuNet Anyone can. It will be enough to paste this URL into address bar your browser:
Http://www.liveinternet.ru/stat/ru/searches.html?period=month;total=yes
The fact is that most of them use .
After entering the given Url, you will see a picture that is not very attractive and presentable, but it well reflects the essence of the matter. Pay attention to the top five search engines from which sites in Russian receive traffic:
Yes, of course, not all resources with Russian-language content are located in this zone. There are also SU and RF, and general areas like COM or NET are full of Internet projects focused on Runet, but still, the sample is quite representative.
This dependence can be presented in a more colorful way, as, for example, someone did online for his presentation:
This doesn't change the essence. There are a couple of leaders and several very, very far behind search engines. By the way, I have already written about many of them. Sometimes it can be quite interesting to plunge into the history of success or, conversely, to delve into the reasons for the failures of once promising search engines.
So, in order of importance for Russia and the Runet as a whole, I will list them and give them brief characteristics:
Searching on Google has already become a household word for many people on the planet - you can read about it in the link. In this search engine, I liked the “translation of results” option, when you received answers from all over the world, but in your native language, but now, unfortunately, it is not available (at least on google.ru).
I’ve also been puzzled lately by the quality of their delivery ( Search Engine Result Page). Personally, I always first use the RuNet mirror search engine (there is one there, well, I’m used to it) and only if I don’t find an intelligible answer there, I turn to Google.
Usually the release of them made me happy, but lately it has only puzzled me - sometimes such nonsense comes out. It is possible that their struggle to increase income with contextual advertising and constant shuffling of issues in order to discredit SEO promotion may lead to the opposite result. In any case, this search engine has a competitor on the RuNet, and what kind of one at that.
I think that it is unlikely that anyone will specifically go to Go.mail.ru to search in RuNet. Therefore, traffic to entertainment projects from this search engine can be significantly more than ten percent. Owners of such projects should pay attention to this system.
However, in addition to the clear leaders in the search engine market of the Russian-language segment of the Internet, there are several more players whose share is quite low, but nevertheless the very fact of their existence makes it necessary to say a few words about them.
Runet search engines from the second echelon
Internet-wide search engines
By and large, on the scale of the entire Internet there is only one serious player - Google. This is the undisputed leader, but it still has some competition.
First of all, it's still the same Bing, which, for example, has a very good position in the American market, especially considering that its engine is also used on all Yahoo services (almost a third of the entire US search market).
Well, secondly, due to the huge share that users from China make up in the total number of Internet users, their main search engine called Baidu wedges itself into the distribution of places on the world Olympus. He was born in 2000 and now his share is about 80% of the entire national audience in China.
It is difficult to say anything more intelligible about Baidu, but on the Internet there are opinions that places in its Top are occupied not only by the sites most relevant to the request, but also by those who paid for it (directly to the search engine, and not to the SEO office). Of course, this applies primarily to commercial listings.
In general, looking at the statistics, it becomes clear why Google easily agrees to worsen its search results in exchange for increasing profits from contextual advertising. In fact, they are not afraid of user churn, because in most cases they have nowhere to go. This situation is somewhat sad, but we'll see what happens next.
By the way, to make life even more difficult for optimizers, and perhaps to maintain peace of mind for users of this search engine, Google has recently used encryption when transmitting queries from users’ browsers to the search bar. Soon it will no longer be possible to see in the statistics of visitor counters what queries Google users came to you for.
Of course, in addition to the search engines mentioned in this publication, there are thousands of others - regional, specialized, exotic, etc. Trying to list and describe them all in one article would be impossible, and probably not necessary. Let's better say a few words about how easy it is to create a search engine and how easy and inexpensive it is to keep it up to date.
The vast majority of systems work on similar principles (read about this and that) and pursue the same goal - to give users an answer to their question. Moreover, this answer must be relevant (corresponding to the question), comprehensive and, which is not unimportant, relevant (of the first freshness).
Solving this problem is not so easy, especially considering that the search engine will need to analyze the contents of billions of Internet pages on the fly, weed out the unnecessary ones, and from the remaining ones form a list (issue), where the most appropriate answers to the user’s question will appear first.
This extremely complex task is solved by preliminary collection of information from these pages using various indexing robots. They collect links from already visited pages and load information from them into the search engine database. There are bots that index text (a regular and fast bot that lives on news and frequently updated resources so that the latest data is always presented in the search results).
In addition, there are robots that index images (for their subsequent output to), favicons, site mirrors (for their subsequent comparison and possible gluing), bots that check the functionality of Internet pages, which users or through tools for webmasters (here you can read about, and) .
The indexing process itself and the subsequent process of updating index databases are quite time-consuming. Although Google does this much faster than its competitors, at least Yandex, which takes a week or two to do this (read about).
Typically, the search engine breaks the text content of an Internet page into individual words, which leads to basic principles, so that you can then give correct answers to questions asked in different morphological forms. All the excess body kit in HTML form tags, spaces, etc. things are deleted, and the remaining words are sorted alphabetically and their position in this document is indicated next to them.
This kind of thing is called a reverse index and allows you to search not by web pages, but by structured data located on the search engine servers.
The number of such servers for Yandex (which searches mainly only for Russian-language sites and a little for Ukrainian and Turkish) is in the tens or even hundreds of thousands, and for Google (which searches in hundreds of languages) - in the millions.
Many servers have copies, which serve both to increase the security of documents and help increase the speed of request processing (by distributing the load). Estimate the costs of maintaining this entire economy.
The user's request will be sent by the load balancer to the server segment that is currently least loaded. Then an analysis is carried out of the region from which the search engine user sent his request, and it is analyzed morphologically. If a similar request was recently entered into search bar, then the user is given data from the cache so as not to overload the servers.
If the request has not yet been cached, then it is transferred to the area where the search engine's index database is located. In response, you will receive a list of all Internet pages that are at least somewhat related to the request. Not only direct occurrences are taken into account, but also other morphological forms, as well as, etc. things.
Their needs to be ranked and at this stage the algorithm (artificial intelligence) comes into play. In fact, the user's request multiplies at the expense of everyone possible options its interpretation and answers to many queries are sought simultaneously (through the use of query language operators, some of which are available to ordinary users).
As a rule, the search results contain one page from each site (sometimes more). are now very complex and take into account many factors. In addition, to correct them, and are used, which manually evaluate reference sites, which allows you to adjust the operation of the algorithm as a whole.
In general, it is clear that the matter is dark. We can talk about this for a long time, but it is already clear that user satisfaction with a search system is achieved, oh, how difficult it is. And there will always be those who don’t like something, like you and me, dear readers.
Good luck to you! See you soon on the pages of the blog site
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Free file hosting services - how to upload a photo and get a link to the picture
Good day to everyone, my dear friends and readers of my blog. Today I want to tell you about the most famous search engines on the Internet in Russian. Internet resources are used for the daily work and leisure of a huge number of people.
And in order to get what is needed or interesting, search engines are used, which are a hardware and software complex for quick search information required by the user stored on servers ( special computers) Internet.
The frequency of use of a search engine is determined, firstly, by how relevant the data it provides, and secondly, by how quickly it does so. The main selection criteria are:
- completeness and accuracy of the results found;
- data relevance;
- finding speed;
- clarity of the interface.
In Russia, the most popular search engines are Yandex, Mail, Rambler and some others. But I would like to provide you with a more detailed list of these systems so that you have a more complete understanding of all this.
Yandex.ru is the most popular within the Russian-language Internet. Search queries can be written in both English and Russian. The motto of the Yandex website is “Everything can be found!” and indeed, they are provided with high-quality and fast provision of information.
Personally, I have been using this search engine by default for more than 10 years and I really like it. And for any webmaster it is simply of great importance, since any of them will work hard to ensure that their site is found in this particular system.
It has a huge index base, which means it can find almost everything. The conclusion of the information found is rational. Yandex is constantly developing. It offers more and more popular services, for example, news, maps, weather forecast, e-mail, Yandex. money. By the way, I wrote here, so if you are interested in this, be sure to read it.
Currently, the share of Yandex use in Russia is about 56 percent. That is, the majority of the country's population prefers to use this particular browser.
And here is the main competitor of the aforementioned Yasha. Yes, this system is certainly not Russian, but one of its founders is our compatriot Sergei Brin. True, he was taken to the states while still a child, so he can hardly be called Russian. If you are interested, then you can read the ones I have collected for you.
Be that as it may, Google is the most popular system in the world and is still the second most popular in Russia.
For today 38 percent All search queries in Russia go through Google
Search Mail.ru
Mail.ru is very popular among Russian-speaking network users. But not many people use the search engine of the same name. By itself, it is ordinary and unremarkable, so it cannot yet withstand competitors such as the aforementioned Yandex and Google. Although I doubt that he will try to conquer the top of search engines. It is enough for him that he has the most popular post office in Russia. But still ours 5 percent of the total number of requests it has.
In addition, the site contains huge amount applications, interesting games, and also has its own social network. Applications have been developed that allow searching by voice.
Rambler.ru
Rambler is one of the earliest options and used to be one of the most popular search engines in the Russian language, along with Yandex. And for the first couple of years I actively used it as the default search engine, until I switched to Yandex. Now it is not used very actively (I would even say not actively at all), although it has good quality and excellent speed.
It is also a popular RuNet media portal where you can use mail and find out the latest news about various areas of life. By the way, it has proven itself quite well as a media and news portal, and I know many people who specifically go to Rambler to read the latest news.
Despite its former popularity, Rambler today owns less 0.5 percent of the total number of requests on the Internet.
WebAlta.ru
WebAlta is one of the new Russian search engines. It is developing well and already reflects more than 1 billion documents, which is a good result. It is easily customizable according to users' preferences. The setting is visualized, and changing the query is immediately reflected in the results.
But how it annoyed me a couple of years ago, when after installing some application, Webalta got up as home page and default search engine. I actually thought it was some kind of virus. Therefore, I will say again: “”.
Well, I won’t even talk about the share of search traffic, since it is negligible.
Nigma.ru
Nigma is a modern Russian intelligent metasearch system. It uses a modern cluster approach, which improves the quality and completeness of the process. The site includes mathematical and chemical subsystems for solving the most different tasks and standard user services.
But so far this is probably the least popular service of all those presented above. Although you can try it in action. Perhaps you will like everything). Well, as far as you understand, the traffic here is also so low that you don’t even have to turn it on.
Please tell me what search engines you use? I'm asking for a reason. The fact is that I recently found out that one of my friends uses Rambler. And to be honest, I was surprised that some of my friends did not use Yandex or Google. I’ve just been hooked on Yandex since the mid-2000s and it is my favorite search engine.
Well, now, in principle, I think that you, in principle, know all the main search engines in Russian, and draw conclusions about which one is more interesting to you. But it’s true that it will be difficult for others to compete with two giants
Well, I guess I’ll finish my article today. I hope you liked it. If so, then be sure to visit me again. Good luck to you. Bye!
Sincerely, Dmitry Kostin.
What is this
DuckDuckGo is a fairly well-known open source search engine. Servers are located in the USA. In addition to its own robot, the search engine uses results from other sources: Yahoo, Bing, Wikipedia.
The better
DuckDuckGo positions itself as a search engine that provides maximum privacy and confidentiality. The system does not collect any data about the user, does not store logs (no search history), and the use of cookies is as limited as possible.
DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information from users. This is our privacy policy.
Gabriel Weinberg, founder of DuckDuckGo
Why do you need this
All major search engines are trying to personalize search results based on data about the person in front of the monitor. This phenomenon is called the “filter bubble”: the user sees only those results that are consistent with his preferences or that the system deems as such.
Forms an objective picture that does not depend on your past behavior on the Internet, and eliminates Google and Yandex thematic advertising based on your queries. With DuckDuckGo it is easy to search for information in foreign languages, while Google and Yandex by default give preference to Russian-language sites, even if the query is entered in another language.
What is this
not Evil is a system that searches the anonymous Tor network. To use it, you need to go to this network, for example by launching a specialized .
not Evil is not the only search engine of its kind. There is LOOK (the default search in the Tor browser, accessible from the regular Internet) or TORCH (one of the oldest search engines on the Tor network) and others. We settled on not Evil because of the clear hint from Google (just look at the start page).
The better
It searches where Google, Yandex and other search engines are generally closed.
Why do you need this
The Tor network contains many resources that cannot be found on the law-abiding Internet. And their number will grow as government control over the content of the Internet tightens. Tor is a kind of network within the Internet with its own social networks, torrent trackers, media, trading platforms, blogs, libraries, and so on.
3. YaCy
What is this
YaCy is a decentralized search engine that works on the principle of P2P networks. Each computer on which the main software module is installed scans the Internet independently, that is, it is analogous to a search robot. The results obtained are collected into a common database that is used by all YaCy participants.
The better
It’s difficult to say whether this is better or worse, since YaCy is a completely different approach to organizing search. The absence of a single server and owner company makes the results completely independent of anyone's preferences. The autonomy of each node eliminates censorship. YaCy is capable of searching the deep web and non-indexed public networks.
Why do you need this
If you are a supporter of open source software and a free Internet, not subject to the influence of government agencies and large corporations, then YaCy is your choice. It can also be used to organize a search within a corporate or other autonomous network. And even though YaCy is not very useful in everyday life, it is a worthy alternative to Google in terms of the search process.
4. Pipl
What is this
Pipl is a system designed to search for information about a specific person.
The better
The authors of Pipl claim that their specialized algorithms search more efficiently than “regular” search engines. In particular, priority is given to social network profiles, comments, member lists, and various databases that publish information about people, such as databases of court decisions. Pipl's leadership in this area is confirmed by assessments from Lifehacker.com, TechCrunch and other publications.
Why do you need this
If you need to find information about a person living in the US, Pipl will be much more effective than Google. The databases of Russian courts are apparently inaccessible to the search engine. Therefore, he does not cope so well with Russian citizens.
What is this
FindSounds is another specialized search engine. Searches various sounds in open sources: house, nature, cars, people, and so on. The service does not support queries in Russian, but there is an impressive list of Russian-language tags that you can use to search.
The better
The output contains only sounds and nothing extra. In the settings you can set the desired format and sound quality. All sounds found are available for download. There is a search by pattern.
Why do you need this
If you need to quickly find the sound of a musket shot, the blows of a suckling woodpecker, or the cry of Homer Simpson, then this service is for you. And we chose this only from the available Russian-language queries. In English the spectrum is even wider.
Seriously, a specialized service requires a specialized audience. But what if it comes in handy for you too?
What is this
Wolfram|Alpha is a computational search engine. Instead of links to articles containing keywords, it provides a ready-made answer to the user’s request. For example, if you enter “compare the populations of New York and San Francisco” into the search form in English, Wolfram|Alpha will immediately display tables and graphs with the comparison.
The better
This service is better than others for finding facts and calculating data. Wolfram|Alpha collects and organizes knowledge available on the Web from a variety of fields, including science, culture and entertainment. If this database contains a ready-made answer to search query, the system shows it, if not, it calculates and displays the result. In this case, the user sees only nothing superfluous.
Why do you need this
If you are a student, analyst, journalist, or researcher, for example, you can use Wolfram|Alpha to find and calculate data related to your work. The service does not understand all requests, but it is constantly developing and becoming smarter.
What is this
Metasearch engine Dogpile displays a combined list of results from search results Google, Yahoo and other popular systems.
The better
First, Dogpile displays fewer ads. Secondly, the service uses a special algorithm to find and show the best results from different search engines. According to the Dogpile developers, their systems generate the most complete search results on the entire Internet.
Why do you need this
If you can't find information on Google or another standard search engine, look for it in several search engines at once using Dogpile.
What is this
BoardReader is a system for text search in forums, question and answer services and other communities.
The better
The service allows you to narrow your search field to social platforms. Thanks to special filters, you can quickly find posts and comments that match your criteria: language, publication date and site name.
Why do you need this
BoardReader can be useful for PR specialists and other media specialists who are interested in the opinion of the masses on certain issues.
In conclusion
The life of alternative search engines is often fleeting. Lifehacker asked the former general director of the Ukrainian branch of Yandex, Sergei Petrenko, about the long-term prospects of such projects.
Sergey Petrenko
Former General Director of Yandex.Ukraine.
As for the fate of alternative search engines, it is simple: to be very niche projects with a small audience, therefore without clear commercial prospects or, conversely, with complete clarity of their absence.
If you look at the examples in the article, you can see that such search engines either specialize in a narrow but popular niche, which, perhaps, has not yet grown enough to be noticeable on the radars of Google or Yandex, or they are testing an original hypothesis in ranking, which is not yet applicable in regular search.
For example, if a search on Tor suddenly turns out to be in demand, that is, results from there are needed by at least a percentage of Google’s audience, then, of course, ordinary search engines will begin to solve the problem of how to find them and show them to the user. If the behavior of the audience shows that for a significant proportion of users in a significant number of queries, results given without taking into account factors depending on the user seem more relevant, then Yandex or Google will begin to produce such results.
“Be better” in the context of this article does not mean “be better at everything.” Yes, in many aspects our heroes are far from Yandex (even far from Bing). But each of these services gives the user something that the giants of the search industry cannot offer. Surely you also know similar projects. Share with us - let's discuss.
What is this
DuckDuckGo is a fairly well-known open source search engine. Servers are located in the USA. In addition to its own robot, the search engine uses results from other sources: Yahoo, Bing, Wikipedia.
The better
DuckDuckGo positions itself as a search engine that provides maximum privacy and confidentiality. The system does not collect any data about the user, does not store logs (no search history), and the use of cookies is as limited as possible.
DuckDuckGo does not collect or share personal information from users. This is our privacy policy.
Gabriel Weinberg, founder of DuckDuckGo
Why do you need this
All major search engines are trying to personalize search results based on data about the person in front of the monitor. This phenomenon is called the “filter bubble”: the user sees only those results that are consistent with his preferences or that the system deems as such.
Forms an objective picture that does not depend on your past behavior on the Internet, and eliminates Google and Yandex thematic advertising based on your queries. With DuckDuckGo it is easy to search for information in foreign languages, while Google and Yandex by default give preference to Russian-language sites, even if the query is entered in another language.
What is this
not Evil is a system that searches the anonymous Tor network. To use it, you need to go to this network, for example by launching a specialized .
not Evil is not the only search engine of its kind. There is LOOK (the default search in the Tor browser, accessible from the regular Internet) or TORCH (one of the oldest search engines on the Tor network) and others. We settled on not Evil because of the clear hint from Google (just look at the start page).
The better
It searches where Google, Yandex and other search engines are generally closed.
Why do you need this
The Tor network contains many resources that cannot be found on the law-abiding Internet. And their number will grow as government control over the content of the Internet tightens. Tor is a kind of network within the Internet with its own social networks, torrent trackers, media, trading platforms, blogs, libraries, and so on.
3. YaCy
What is this
YaCy is a decentralized search engine that works on the principle of P2P networks. Each computer on which the main software module is installed scans the Internet independently, that is, it is analogous to a search robot. The results obtained are collected into a common database that is used by all YaCy participants.
The better
It’s difficult to say whether this is better or worse, since YaCy is a completely different approach to organizing search. The absence of a single server and owner company makes the results completely independent of anyone's preferences. The autonomy of each node eliminates censorship. YaCy is capable of searching the deep web and non-indexed public networks.
Why do you need this
If you are a supporter of open source software and a free Internet, not subject to the influence of government agencies and large corporations, then YaCy is your choice. It can also be used to organize a search within a corporate or other autonomous network. And even though YaCy is not very useful in everyday life, it is a worthy alternative to Google in terms of the search process.
4. Pipl
What is this
Pipl is a system designed to search for information about a specific person.
The better
The authors of Pipl claim that their specialized algorithms search more efficiently than “regular” search engines. In particular, priority is given to social network profiles, comments, member lists, and various databases that publish information about people, such as databases of court decisions. Pipl's leadership in this area is confirmed by assessments from Lifehacker.com, TechCrunch and other publications.
Why do you need this
If you need to find information about a person living in the US, Pipl will be much more effective than Google. The databases of Russian courts are apparently inaccessible to the search engine. Therefore, he does not cope so well with Russian citizens.
What is this
FindSounds is another specialized search engine. Searches various sounds in open sources: house, nature, cars, people, and so on. The service does not support queries in Russian, but there is an impressive list of Russian-language tags that you can use to search.
The better
The output contains only sounds and nothing extra. In the settings you can set the desired format and sound quality. All sounds found are available for download. There is a search by pattern.
Why do you need this
If you need to quickly find the sound of a musket shot, the blows of a suckling woodpecker, or the cry of Homer Simpson, then this service is for you. And we chose this only from the available Russian-language queries. In English the spectrum is even wider.
Seriously, a specialized service requires a specialized audience. But what if it comes in handy for you too?
What is this
Wolfram|Alpha is a computational search engine. Instead of links to articles containing keywords, it provides a ready-made answer to the user's request. For example, if you enter “compare the populations of New York and San Francisco” into the search form in English, Wolfram|Alpha will immediately display tables and graphs with the comparison.
The better
This service is better than others for finding facts and calculating data. Wolfram|Alpha collects and organizes knowledge available on the Web from a variety of fields, including science, culture and entertainment. If this database contains a ready-made answer to a search query, the system displays it; if not, it calculates and displays the result. In this case, the user sees only nothing superfluous.
Why do you need this
If you are a student, analyst, journalist, or researcher, for example, you can use Wolfram|Alpha to find and calculate data related to your work. The service does not understand all requests, but it is constantly developing and becoming smarter.
What is this
The Dogpile metasearch engine displays a combined list of results from search results from Google, Yahoo and other popular systems.
The better
First, Dogpile displays fewer ads. Secondly, the service uses a special algorithm to find and show the best results from different search engines. According to the Dogpile developers, their systems generate the most complete search results on the entire Internet.
Why do you need this
If you can't find information on Google or another standard search engine, look for it in several search engines at once using Dogpile.
What is this
BoardReader is a system for text search in forums, question and answer services and other communities.
The better
The service allows you to narrow your search field to social platforms. Thanks to special filters, you can quickly find posts and comments that match your criteria: language, publication date and site name.
Why do you need this
BoardReader can be useful for PR specialists and other media specialists who are interested in the opinion of the masses on certain issues.
In conclusion
The life of alternative search engines is often fleeting. Lifehacker asked the former general director of the Ukrainian branch of Yandex, Sergei Petrenko, about the long-term prospects of such projects.
Sergey Petrenko
Former General Director of Yandex.Ukraine.
As for the fate of alternative search engines, it is simple: to be very niche projects with a small audience, therefore without clear commercial prospects or, conversely, with complete clarity of their absence.
If you look at the examples in the article, you can see that such search engines either specialize in a narrow but popular niche, which, perhaps, has not yet grown enough to be noticeable on the radars of Google or Yandex, or they are testing an original hypothesis in ranking, which is not yet applicable in regular search.
For example, if a search on Tor suddenly turns out to be in demand, that is, results from there are needed by at least a percentage of Google’s audience, then, of course, ordinary search engines will begin to solve the problem of how to find them and show them to the user. If the behavior of the audience shows that for a significant proportion of users in a significant number of queries, results given without taking into account factors depending on the user seem more relevant, then Yandex or Google will begin to produce such results.
“Be better” in the context of this article does not mean “be better at everything.” Yes, in many aspects our heroes are far from Yandex (even far from Bing). But each of these services gives the user something that the giants of the search industry cannot offer. Surely you also know similar projects. Share with us - let's discuss.
