“Google, what’s it good for?”
Every Thursday on AltSearchEngines, we welcome contributions (like yours) from Guest Authors. Today’s article comes from Alex Kirtland.
The Compete Blog has had a couple of fascinating posts over the past few days looking at how people search on Google, as well as the other major search engines. (How do I get to www.google.com? and So who’s doing all this searching anyway?)
Which of course prompted me to think about how I use Google. And, in a broader sense, is Google still good after all these years?
As way to analyze this question - on a very personal level, of course - I came up with the four basic reasons that I do search these days.
1. Take me to X’s website
As the Compete blog aptly notices (and confirms with research), the Google search bar is now a navigational bar. I won’t go so far as to type in an actual web address - as it appears a lot of people do - but if I don’t know the exact web address, but I know exactly who I’m looking for, Google is an excellent way to get there.
2. Find this for me on Wikipedia
Perhaps this is the result of some sort of crowd related madness, but the more people link to pages on Wikipedia, the higher it appears on Google, the more likely people are to find something on Wikipedia, and then link to it. Particularly those nutty bloggers.
As a result, I use the Google search bar as my (almost) exclusive entry way into Wikipedia. Usually, no matter what I’m searching for, a Wikipedia result is within the top five hits. Some examples:
Perhaps there’s a new information duopoly on the rise: GooglePedia (or the more groovy sounding, Wikoogle).
3. Ego searching
You still do it, you know you do. But Google, perhaps distracted by other things, is not longer my favored search engine of self love.
While there are many people search engines out there, my favorite is pipl. While Spock, is fun, pipl gets great quotes about me …
… although it does confuse me a bit with this other guy (definitely not me), Alex Kirtland, from Ohio.
4. Um, and, oh yeah, find something for me on the Internet
And finally, the reason search was invented in the first place: to find information where you are unsure of its location.
This seems to be one area where people think Google is weak (or, as some people have noted, how can 208,000 search results be a good search?). The best alternative I’ve found so far has been AfterVote.
What I like (nay, love) about AfterVote is that I can compare page rank results from the major search engines, and sort by them too. This is a terribly easy way to see how the different search engines understood what I was looking for.
And, oh yeah, I can enter my own vote (if I decide I have the time, and am not rushing off to my new found information) for what page best satisfied my need.
As always, thanks for listening! -Alex Kirtland
