The Alternative Search Engine of the Year, 2007!
OK, LET’S DO THIS.
There are 10 finalists for the Alternative Search Engine of the Year:
1) Quintura
2) Answers.com
3) Exalead
4) Omgili
5) KoolTorch
6) GoshMe
7) AfterVote
8. KartOO
9) Dialogus
10) Onkosh
Round One - the Popular Vote.
There were 200 votes cast, and 100 of them were for Onkosh. Do the math!
Round Two - the Market Share.
According to the source that I use, SearchtheTail, see Rankings- The Top 100 Alternative Search Engines for August, it’s Answers.com out in front.
Round Three - the Drive to Innovate.
…and that’s just a sample! All winners, in my book - sorry, but this one is too tough to call.
Round Four - Leadership.
KoolTorch and Omgili both helped us with creative demos like AltsR.Us, so they tie.
and speaking of KoolTorch, I’m tossing in as Round Five - personal favorite.
Round Six - Recognition.
AfterVote is named one of PC magazine’s Top 100 websites in November and Quintura one of the Top 25 in June! 
for the whole month of November I thought about these 10 search engines, and I never came up with a clear winner. As you can see from the summary above, they all have their unique strengths. That’s one of the drawbacks to having a Top 10 list - each one could be the winner.
But then a strange thing happened, December 1st fell on a Saturday, so I moved the announcement to Monday, December 3rd, and something happened yesterday that took this fight into…
Round Seven - the final round!
The deciding factor and Alternative Search Engine of the Year, 2007 is…
~~~ATTITUDE!~~~
~~~QUINTURA!~~~
On Saturday Quintura began their new ad campaign “We are not afraid of Google!” Now that may just be bravado, and I’m sure that all 10 finalists would say that they are not afraid of Google, either, but only Quintura has made it an explicit corporate slogan! Anyone reading this blog for the past six months couldn’t miss the fact that I am constantly trying to stir the Alts into action.
The quality of the Top 100 Alts is self-explanatory in a way - it’s how they got on the list. The Top ten finalists are fantastic, and the comments I have read have all echoed that. They are all excellent search engines. But the heart and soul of this blog is to go one step further. We don’t just want to list the best Alts, or recognize the best Alts, we want to champion their success vis a vis the major search engines. To “rock and shock” the Search world and alter the staus quo.
Like AltSearchEngines, Quintura’s new slogan is not “anti-Google,” it’s not “Google Sucks!” What it is is a rally cry -no more back of the bus - it reminds me of Lech Walesa leading the strikers in Poland. That electrician ended up the President!
Quintura’s accomplishments are well documented on this and many other blogs and media outlets, and now they have injected a little emotion into the mix. That’s Alternative Search Engine pride, and that’s what resonates most with me. It’s not the only reason they were chosen, obviously, but it was just enough to tip the needle!
Disclosure: Quintura and Exalead are Sponsors of AltSearchEngines.
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:31 am
Congratulations Quintura
Well deserved innovative search engine!
Congrats Charles on an excellent choice.
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:53 am
Frankly, it’s come as a surprise because there are strong and well sponsored contenders on your top 10 list.
Though, given all our deliverables in 2007 including a graphical search interface, affiliate program for site search, widgets, a Russian site, and a kids’ search engine, I did expect we should make to a top 3 alternative search engine in 2007.
I will frankly say thanks for understanding to our venture capital investors Mangrove Capital Partners who have shared our long-term vision and supported our attitude to challenge Google.
…in fact, we did get some recognition by the computer industry.
Quintura was listed among Top 25 Sites to Watch by PC World in June 2007 http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132787-page,6-c,sites/article.html
Quintura was also named Product of the Year by PC Magazine/Russian Edition in September 2007 http://www.pcmag.ru/internet/detail.php?ID=8988&phrase_id=506342
We are all going to be the winners and work hard to make it happen.
December 3rd, 2007 at 6:45 am
[…] AltSearchEngines has now declared Quintura the winner. […]
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:10 am
Way to go Yakov and the folk at Quintura, for developing this awesome alternative search engine! I’ve been a fan from the start!
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:11 am
[…] AltSearchEngines has now declared Quintura the winner. […]
December 3rd, 2007 at 9:39 am
Congratulations Quintura, Yakov et al! The market share source that Charles mentioned above is at www.searchtail.com.
December 3rd, 2007 at 4:27 pm
I also think Quintura is a good choice for best alternative search engine. It has been working on its visual mapping for some time. The tagcloud idea works well, and Quintura seems to have the added technology to analyze search results to pick out the “context” words. I like the additional controls provided on the “map” now, the features for saving the search, and the companion searches on images, video, and amazon. It has become a much stronger search engine.
I posted a longer review to Internet News - http://www.websearchguide.ca/netblog/archives/006844.html
One of Quintura’s strengths is that is uses the Yahoo database of well over 20 billion pages.
Exalead also has many good features especially its “related terms”. But I don’t think its database is good enough for it to be in the big league. It’s small at 8 billion, it’s not as fresh as it should be, and seems more accepting of spam (at least on my queries).
Answers.com is an excellent knowledge tool for definitions and encyclopedia-type information. I don’t really consider it an alternative engine.
Thanks for running the contest and declaring a winner.
December 3rd, 2007 at 7:46 pm
[…] The Alternative Search Engine of the Year, 2007! | Gracias: […]
December 4th, 2007 at 1:34 am
Congratulations, Quintura! Very well-deserved - the dynamic tag cloud is an excellent way to navigate around the search results space.
Much better than those static, bland headline+fragment results pages of that other engine, that you certainly shouldn’t be afraid of!
December 4th, 2007 at 3:17 am
[…] clasificación sobre los mejores buscadores alternativos de este año, que según AltSearhEngines (The Alternative Search Engine of the Year, 2007!), el ganador del 2007 es Quintura y su búsqueda visual por etiquetas, de quien ya han hablado en […]
December 4th, 2007 at 5:40 am
[…] Here is a list of ten finalists from AltSearchEngines.com: […]
December 4th, 2007 at 6:36 am
Big round applause for Quintura, Yakov and the team. It has been really strong, and it was a pleasure that our engine, Onkosh.com, was on the same list with Quintura and all the rest.
I would like to thank all the volunteer voters, who have made the effort to pass by and vote for Onkosh. It’s been very impressive and very rewarding.
Another big thank you goes to Charles for his extraordinary efforts for making this distinguished list.
Wishing all the Alt’s more continued successes.
Hany Abdelkawi
www.onkosh.com
December 4th, 2007 at 7:42 am
[…] Понедельник 3 декабря стал днём выбора – парламентского («Единая Россия»), футбольного (определились соперники сборной России на Евро-2008 и лучший игрок мира - Кака) и поискового. Результаты последнего нам особенно приятны, ведь Чарльз Найт c AltSearchEngines назвал Quintura лучшим альтернативным (отраслевым гигантам) поисковиком года именно за нашу пользовательскую ориентированность. Приводим перевод статьи: […]
December 4th, 2007 at 11:59 am
[…] AltSearchEngines. Quintura обошла всех своих конкурентов и победила (подробности на […]
December 4th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Congratulations Quintura.
December 4th, 2007 at 1:31 pm
[…] altsearchengines.com had narrowed down the field of alternative search engines from over 100 to 10 in their search for the best. All of the contenders have excellent alternative (other than Google, Yahoo etc) search offerings. […]
December 4th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
[…] Quintura под лозунгом: ” Мы не боимся Google! “. Топ 10 от AltSearchEngines: 1. Quintura 2. Answers.com 3. Exalead 4. Omgili 5. KoolTorch 6. GoshMe 7. AfterVote 8. KartOO 9. […]
December 4th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Excellent work Charles. This is my third message to you. I have always admired your work and this web site. I come here daily for the fun of it, and to learn. I really get a big thrill to see all the other BIG web sites watching you. I just know you have changed a lot of things about search engines. I know it is a labor of love, so please keep it up. Sincerely, Dave Curtis.
December 4th, 2007 at 3:19 pm
CONGRATULATIONS!!! I knew you guys had a winner.
Alec Peters
CEO
www.screamingsports.com
December 5th, 2007 at 12:57 am
:)))
December 5th, 2007 at 1:00 am
Gr8 job done by Quintura guys congrats…:) they have given gr8 thing to users.
Vishal Gupta
http://www.meds4all.com
December 5th, 2007 at 5:46 am
[…] delikatnie, trudny do oszacowania. Serwis AltSearchEngines nadał jej jednak w tym roku tytuł Alternative Search Engine of the Year, 2007. Dalsze miejsca zajęły […]
December 5th, 2007 at 10:13 am
[…] 以前曾介绍过Read/WriteWeb网站评选“100个除google外可选的搜索引擎”——指除Google、Yahoo！等主流搜索引擎之外的其他有特色搜索引擎。Read/WriteWeb是按月评选，好像评了几个月后再没有了动静。最近AltSearchEngines网站选出了2007年度可选搜索引擎（Alternative search engine of the year，2007）,从400多个特色搜索引擎中评选出十个最佳的。 […]
December 5th, 2007 at 4:35 pm
An interview with Yakov at The Next Web conference in Amsterdam can be viewed here: http://www.tv4b.com/index.php?page=watch&f_videoid=228
Congrats!
December 6th, 2007 at 1:13 am
Quintura: Alternative Search Engine of the Year…
Over on the AltSearchEngines blog, Quintura has emerged as the winner of the The Alternative Search Engine of the Year - 2007 contest. All the finalists are excellent search engines, so it must have been a tough call - as…
December 8th, 2007 at 10:37 am
[…] this week over at AltSearchEngines the title of alternative search engine of the year was awarded to Quintura. Strictly speaking it […]
December 11th, 2007 at 1:44 am
[…] for visiting!Alt Search Engines, a blog by Charles Knight covering alternative-search, ranked the top 10 alternative search engines of 2007. Among the ten finalists, the 2nd and 4th places were taken by Israel-based search […]
December 11th, 2007 at 6:43 am
A little to late, but can Answers.com can really be regarded as an Alternative Search Engine? First of all its an aggregator. Its like calling wikipedia a search engine. For complex queries it uses Google as a search engine and Google is referring users to Answers.com from the results page. Basically you nominated Google as an Alternative Search Engine
December 24th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
Good Collection !
January 24th, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Very nice collection of alternative search engines!! i have bookmarked almost all and will try to use them frequenty.
March 30th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Very nice!!!!
April 12th, 2008 at 3:30 pm
July 14th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
was ist hier mit bildern los?