What's your favorite search engine?

Google by far.

Google, hands down =P

But yahoo when I don't know I'm looking for specifically.

Google.. In fact I could almost go on to say Google - exclusively. I used Yahoo! a few days ago when I couldn't get to Google but that's the first time in months. Heck, even my homepage is set to Google :)

Greg Moore

Google is your friend. :)

A high listing in google for your highly targeted and descriptive keyword is worth pure gold!! :D

Google all the way :agree:

The search engine wars are over, and Google won.

Google - by far the winner

I'm the sixteenth person to vote.
And the sixteenth person to vote for Google.
So far, no votes for anything else.:rolleyes:

Umm usually I Yahooooooooooooo! but it comes back with google results so would that not kind of make them the same company? I dont know why I use Yahoo! prob because I have been using it since the first day I was on the net.

Google without a doubt, anyone know why they are so popular?

Is it just because of the layout, format user friendliness, or do they have a better system to search?

Originally posted by Blackman
Is it just because of the layout, format user friendliness, or do they have a better system to search?

Yes, yes, and yes.

As a side note, Google is a perfect example of what happens when 20% of a company's employees have doctorates. People who are capable of performing independent and innovative research are also very likely to come up with innovative and profitable ideas.

Originally posted by Blackman
Google without a doubt, anyone know why they are so popular? Well for one thing, they're really not as popular as this poll suggests. But, as I've mentioned here before, search engine choice depends on the searcher's background; and people who are the most technically astute or the most experienced with the internet tend to choose Google. Overall, Yahoo's marketing, AOL's market penetration, and MSN's default browser availability keep them near the top.

Google is set apart by the relevance of the results they return. That comes down to three factors: good search algorithm, a minimum of spam, and a lack of (or segregation of) advertising.

Someone mentioned that using Yahoo brings Google results anyway, but it's really only true that it brings those results "eventually." For common search terms, you'll first get at least a page of "sponsor matches" (advertising from Overture) and "web site matches" (paid listings from the Yahoo directory) before you get the results that weren't influenced by advertising expenditures.

They're not perfect, though. Google has some problems. The heavy reliance on PageRank, for example, makes it difficult for new or small sites to compete with big, established sites for position; and there's plenty of convincing speculation that Google's long-range plans include "encouraging" ecommerce-style commercial sites into using Adwords paid placement while moving the "regular" results towards including only "informational" sites. That agenda, the theory goes, has led to some heavy-handed application of "anti-spam" techniques that has hurt some small businesses that actually weren't intentionally doing anything related to spam... and has caused useful sites to go missing from Google's index for months at a time, to the detriment of the quality of their results.

In my own searching I use Google first; but for some queries still don't get what I'm looking for. Second choice, then: FAST/AllTheWeb. Big database, good relevancy, advertising is clearly marked and segregated, and it responds at least as quickly as Google. And, the "query rewrite" tool is great; it's one reason you tend to get relevant results from FAST.

I like Dogpile, but if I can't find what I'm looking for there I go with Google.

Google all the way. And it looks like a landslide with everyone else :D

Yahoo! uses Google.

So if you Gooooooogle then you Yahooooooooo! too.

Originally posted by Shyne
Yahoo! uses Google.

So if you Gooooooogle then you Yahooooooooo! too. Faulty logic! :)

If you Yahoo, you probably Google (unless you don't use the "web page matches," which are the Google results). But it's never true that when you Google, you Yahoo too. Google doesn't use Yahoo!

It's unanimous. I google too. no surprise. pretty amazing though. Excite and Yahoo were around long before google, and were the top search engines at one time. Now everyone goes to Google.

Originally posted by rence
Now everyone goes to Google. Hmm... that's arguable. According to the May 16 numbers from Jupiter Media Metrix, among search destinations MSN had the most unique visitors over the past three months, followed by Yahoo and then by Google. The good news for Google is that they showed a 54% increase over the prior reporting period! Yahoo was up 20% and MSN 18%. Overall search engine traffic was up 11%, which illustrates that these "big 3" are solidifying their hold on search traffic.

An argument can be made, though, that Google is probably the site preferred for pure searching. Yahoo is popular as a portal, for webmail, etc., and Jupiter's numbers for MSN include visitors to auto.search.msn.com that arrived there by typing a search term in the browser location bar in IE instead of explicitly visiting the site.

Infoseek all the way!!!















(that's if it was still around...:()

ToastyX, there is no more infoseek...

I used to Yahoooooooooo!, but now I Gooooooooogle more :)

A high listing in google for your highly targeted and descriptive keyword is worth pure gold!! :D

I manage to be number 1 with my main keywords, and number 2-4 with a keywords of a different spelling. Now to get it to show my site's darn description tag like it used to :eek:

I did a check on my site just now and managed to be in the first 10 pages using most of my targeted keywords. Not bad for a RPG site eh? ;)

...for example, makes it difficult for new or small sites to compete with big, established sites for position...

I have to kinda disagree with you here.
<personal story>Once I learned about keywords, content, etc for submitting to search engine my site climbed up to the first page in about 4 months on Google using keywords "2 The Xtreme RPG" (which I'm still #1). Using just the name, I end up #2 (2 The Xtreme)
</personal story>.....

Anyways, back on topic. In a way it is difficult, but its mostly on the end of having to research some more to beat those established sites. New sites need to be more *careful* in choosing their keyword(s) to be able to make it high up on the results page... IMHO ;)

I liked Google ever since I saw "googlebot" in my website log and wanted to see how it did. (this is how I found google). Since then, I dont use Yahoo anymore.

If I cant get to google, I either use Yahoo, Excite, Dogpile, or Alta Vista.

Just my 2 cents...

I used to use AltaVista and Deja until Google acquired Deja. I didn't like Google at first, but they've since improved greatly.

Originally posted by MGCJerry
I have to kinda disagree with you here.
I don't see how you're disagreeing with my point, so maybe I didn't make it clearly. So I'll try to clarify: Google's "PageRank" is a measure of the quantity and "quality" of backwards links pointing to a page. It's a highly important part of their ranking algorithm. Large, established sites will have, sometimes by orders of magnitude, more backwards links than new, or small, sites. In deciding to give such importance to PageRank, Google has made a clear decision that the "tie breaker" in ranking sites should be to give the better position to pages on large, established, "corporate" sites.

And my point remains in spite of your example: there are no large, corporate sites competing for your key phrase; indeed only 155 pages are returned for "2 The Xtreme RPG" (as a phrase, in quotes) on Google.

Try competing against a Microsoft product and you'll see what I mean.

Of course you can always come up with some near-meaningless term for which you can compete, because "they" aren't trying. But that's the fraudulent technique used my many seo firms; it's traffic that matters, not result page positioning.

As new or small site must, as you say, carefully choose keywords that toe the line between being not-too-competitive and still bringing in traffic. That's the essence of search engine positioning for any search engine, but it nonetheless doesn't change the fact that Google, more than any of the others, skews results towards larger, established sites.

I'm not addressing their reasons for doing so, which may simply be the idea that such sites are more likely to be what searchers are looking for and less likely to be "spam" sites. I'm addressing the situation, not the reason for it -- because that is also the essence of search engine positioning!
:D

Anyway, to a more on-topic point: I do think Google remains the best source of relevant search engine results, most of the time. It's when I want to avoid PageRank's influence, or when I want a more accurate link popularity count, that I use FAST.

Gee, I still must be sick... 10 days and counting :eek: but it could be the medication.

Well... you show'd me how much I know about Google and search engines... Thanks for clarifying and straightening me out ;)

* grabs a "Idiots guide to search engines", and crawls back under his corner desk that he emerged from*

There are other seach engines besides google? Woah! :)

Originally posted by MGCJerry
* grabs a "Idiots guide to search engines", and crawls back under his corner desk that he emerged from* Ha! Sorry, didn't mean to chase you under a desk! I hope you took that as it was intended. What I meant to say, too -- and now I see that I mistyped it -- was that I didn't see that you were disagreeing with me. That is, you said you "kinda disagree," but I didn't see a disagreement with my point in what you wrote.

Anyway, re-reading you post I found this: Now to get it to show my site's darn description tag like it used to Interesting. Google doesn't normally use the meta description; it uses what's fondly called a "ransom note" description: snippets of the text that contain the search terms. Personally, as a searcher I prefer that, because I can see the context in which my search term is used on each site and better choose which site is worth looking at.

Google will use the meta description if there's no other indexable text on the page (a flash site, for example), and will include it along with the "ransom note" for those searches that result in a hit on the Google directory listing, if your site is listed there. But... yours doesn't seem to be. Too bad, because there's one other trick you could use if it was. Are you sure you used to see your description tag at Google?

Nothing can compare to google

Ha! Sorry, didn't mean to chase you under a desk!
Hehehe... its nice and dark down there...

*eyes begin to glow red in the darkenss*

Interesting. Google doesn't normally use the meta description; it uses what's fondly called a "ransom note" description: snippets of the text that contain the search terms.

Hmm... It could also be that my site no longer uses frames. I had all my keywords, descriptions, etc in my frame page, so that could be the reason why it used the description instead. At one point I thought about putting my site in a frame, for that sole reason, but that seems ameturish.

I managed to keep my old HTML site, and its located at My HTML site (http://www.2thextreme.org/HTML/) Note that my keywords are chopped out of that frame page to save space. But yes, I used to see my description in Google just before I took my site out of frames..

oops...

I had never heard of Dogpile... and the first thing I did was search google for it <slaps self />. You see, I've setup quick search in IE, so all I have to do is type "g Dogpile" and hit return to search :)

Oh, and yes, I use google :)

EDT: just did a search for my domain (just the bit before the .net) and I came up first on Dogpile :) That beats second on Google..

Douglas

Dogpile's a meta engine, just querying and showing the results from a number of different search engines (and the "Dogpile Directory," which actually comes from LookSmart). The thing I don't like about using them for searches is that they draw heavily from paid sites -- Overture, Yahoo, Looksmart, etc. -- and I prefer more "democratic" search results (yeah, probably seems odd for someone in the seo business). On the other hand, they do include FAST, which I like. Long ago they used to use Google, actually.

i'm pretty mixed between www.metacrawler.com and google.

if i can't find it through google, it ain't out there :D

Originally posted by skylab
i'm pretty mixed between www.metacrawler.com and google. Really? I have to say, I find metacrawlers results to have the least relevancy to a given search term of any of the metas. The only meta search engine I find useful is ixquick, which takes a little different approach and seems to work fairly well.

For example, a term I use to illustrate effectiveness is "search engine terminology." I like it because it can be miscast by s.e. algorithms in a couple of different ways -- automobile engine terminology, for example. And metacrawler fails badly; most of the top pages returned are search engine home pages. Well, maybe that's useful -- I could use the google search page to do my search again, and find what I'm looking for!

Ixquick does a good job with it... dogpile does too, but really only because of the order in which queried search sites are returned; some of the results are worthless. Verisign? Why? Well, because they are a sponsored site on Looksmart, where they appear for almost anything. Looksmart and Overture results are what damage the effectiveness of the meta search engines, in fact.

The most relevant results are consistantly found at search engines that find all or most of their included pages through active spidering. Primarily that means Google and FAST.

I also have to agree that google is the best there is!!! :D