The Top 10 Swedish Search Engines - Redux
Editor’s note: We have had some wonderful feedback to our trip to Sweden, so I am running this update. Please note that the most important piece, a Swedish volunteer who can describe these search engines in English for us, is still missing.
Every Saturday on AltSearchEngines, we continue our tour “around the world in 80 weeks.” Today we’ve landed in Sweden in search of new Alternative Search Engines, and below we’ve listed the Top 10.
There’s just one hitch. We don’t know how to read Swedish! So we’re running this Help Wanted ad. If you were born in Sweden, Norway, Denmark or Finland, we would love to hear from you. You could start by looking at the Top 10 Swedish Search Engines below and providing a short evaluation of each one - in English. That would be great. Just email me at: Charles@ReadWriteWeb.com
Thanks to Readle, Ambedo, and Picsearch for their help in preparing this list!
Translation sent in by ASE reader Bork: (an attempt at humor)
Efery Setoordey oon EltSeerchEngeenes, ve-a cuntinooe-a oooor tuoor “eruoond zee vurld in 80 veeks.” Tudey ve-a’fe-a lunded in Svedee in seerch ooff noo Elternetife-a Seerch Ingeenes, und beloo ve-a’fe-a leested zee Tup 10.
Zeere-a’s joost oone-a heetch. Ve-a dun’t knoo hoo tu reed Svedeesh! Su ve-a’re-a roonneeng thees Help Vunted ed. Iff yuoo vere-a born in Svedee, Nurvey, Denmerk oor Feenlund, ve-a vuoold lufe-a tu heer frum yuoo. Yuoo cuoold stert by luukeeng et zee Tup 10 Svedeesh Seerch Ingeenes beloo und prufeeding a shurt ifelooeshun ooff iech oone-a - in Ingleesh. Thet vuoold be-a greet. Joost imeeel me-a et: Cherles@ReedVreeteVeb.cum
Thunks tu Reedle-a, Embedu, und Peekserch fur zeeur help in prepereeng thees leest!
*Why does this ASE end with .nu? .se is Sweden and .no is Norway.
(.nu is officially the domain name for the tiny island nation of Niue!)
” .nu is to 99% used for Swedish companies. “nu” means “now” in Swedish.”
-Carl Särnstrand with Picsearch
Update:
There are a couple of other smaller Swedish start-ups. Here is a short but incomplete list of companies developing and providing search technology courtesy of Picsearch:
- Picsearch.com: Global image, audio and video search.
- Euroling.se: Corporate search service siteseeker.se
- Primelab.se: Twingly.se, local blog link search service
- Knuff.se: Local blog search
- Aitellu.se: Local news search service
- Frisim.se: Local news search service
- Retriever.se: Local news search service
- Observer.se: Local news search service (Cision.com)
- Worldlight.com: Web search and meta search
October 15th, 2007 at 7:30 am
[…] unknown wrote an interesting post today!.Here’s a quick excerptPlease note that the most important piece, a Swedish volunteer who can describe these search engines in English for us, is still missing. Every Saturday on AltSearchEngines, we continue our tour “around the world in 80 weeks. … […]
October 17th, 2007 at 3:15 am
Hi,
My name is Lars Våge and I am a Swede. I and a friend write a search engine blog in Swedish called Internetbrus. We have been covering global and Swedish search engines continually since march 2001 writing a couple pf posts per week. Some of our articles have been translated into English and been posted on Pandia.com. We both work at university libraries.
Anyway, the top 10 selection here is maybe not so representative. Some of these I have not even heard of.
The most used SE apart from Google would be Eniro.se. They also have the most extensive Swedish news search engine. Sesam.se is a newer addition but maybe the second most important, also with a good news SE.
Picsearch.se is a global image SE which have been at various times been licensed to Microsoft, Ask, Lycos and has lots of contracts in different countries.
Hitta.se has many users but is mostly for phone numbers and company search and Eniro does that too.
Frisim is another but much smaller free news SE whereas Observer and Retriever are news services you have to pay for. I don’t think they fit in a list like this because they are not free. If so there are others that could be mentioned.
A good place to search for Swedish press releases is Newsdesk.se.
Blocket.se is where you buy and sell stuff you want to get rid of in Sweden. Bokfynd is one of several book price comparison services but a good one, compricer.se is another one.
Any list of Swedish search engines should incude the SUNET web directory which has been around since 1991, the most comprehensive web directory in Sweden. It is now available here: katalogen.kthnoc.se.
The Directory of Open Access Journals (doaj.org) is produced in Sweden and is an important academic resource but has no Swedish focus.
Siteseeker is a SE company with advanced solutions. We have written a text book in Swedish on Internet Search with one of the owners.
BTW an interesting Swedish image search project can be found here http://www.itn.liu.se/media/vinnova/cse.php
Concerning blog SEs Twingly is one of maybe 10 rather good Swedish blog search engines/directories but a hot one at the moment.
I can gladly answer questions about the Swedish SE scene and explain words but I don’t have the time too review the ones on the top-10 at the moment.
Lars Våge