The remaining market share for Alt Search Engines 2007 = 1.68%. In 2008 = 1.63%

1) The winner takes it all.  How close to 100% do you think Google can get?

2) Google is not necessarily gaining; perhaps Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask.com are imploading.

3) A rising tide lifts all boats.  Oh wait, but the tide is receding.  Never mind!

Source: Hitwise

Any comments?

Here’s a response by Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten at TheNextWeb.com:

Check out this graph by Hitwise based on a sample of 10 million U.S. based Internet users. In 12 months Google gained 7,21% of search traffic. The other search engines lost a combined (Yahoo -3,91%, MSN -2,02%, Ask -1,23%) 7,16% which means that Google is growing faster than other search engines are shrinking.

So how big will Google get? If they keep growing like this they will reach 100% market share within 4 years. Will that happen? Or can we expect Google to make a strategic investment in Yahoo & Ask just to keep the competition alive and avoid becoming a monopoly.

That seems unlikely but it is what Microsoft did in 1997 by investing $150 million into Apple. Or will Google be the Altavista of this century and will we see an alternative search solution take its place? I think we all agree that Google advertising business is too big and mighty to be easily replaced. But search? How hard could it be to come up with a better solution?

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As video and image content on the web becomes more prevalent and compelling, search engines are finding new and innovative ways for users to search and browse through these rich contents and provide a more visual search experience. Google Image search is great but the interface is really built on top of the traditional text web search and hasn’t evolved along with the type of rich content available now and user’s expectation in terms of searching for visually rich contents.

There has been various visual search engines that caters for these needs, they are really a special type of aggregation search engine that focus on video and images contents using a number of search engines such as Google and Yahoo. These search engines are visually rich with very innovative user interface that are completely different from your traditional web search experience and you primarily browse and decide on where you want to drill into from the results set based on images or screen shots of the websites.

One of these visual search engines is SearchMe which display screen shots of the page and images in the results in an iTunes Cover Flow like layout that is familiar to iTunes users. This allows you to quickly decide which website to focus on based on the look of it by flicking through them.

CoolIris which is one my favourite alternative search engines is another visual search engine that is taking the idea of cover flow to the next level to provides a completely new and unique search experience.

As an example, when I search for “iPhone leather case” the look of the case is probably of the utmost importance to me as a searcher. additional, the ability to visually browse through all type of leather cases quickly and efficiently is also of benefit to me as a searcher. This is exactly what Cooliris allow you to do!

Cooliris not so much as provides a cover flow layout but more of a cover WALL layout that gives you the feeling of walking pass a continuous walls of images that stretches indefinitely after you do a search. You can use the same unique search interface to search through Flickr, and YouTube and find your results in a wall of images. The shopping search option is particular useful as it not only lists images of the product you are searching for but also include the price and a link to where you buy it. I must say it works very well. This visually rich experience is achieved through a browser plugin and the the result is indeed a very un-browser like experience.

The layout is not only beautiful but effective. I personally think it is one of the most effective design in terms of searching for and browsing through visually rich contents.

More importantly, what is it good for ? Searching for images and video from multiple sites is an obvious area where you can have a lot of fun. If you are searching for ideas or products and are primarily interest in how it looks, Cooliris can definitely make you life a lot easier and make the search experience more interesting.

As an added bonus, CoolIris also offer an iPhone app version of its search engine which amazingly delivers a similar visual experience using the comparatively much smaller iPhone screen!

Definitely worth checking out!

Thanks to Felix Liao at Search1x.com

SortFix is an interesting search engine which combines visual search and drag’n’drop baskets to help the user refine their search experience. The concept is well explained with the home page video and SortFix FAQ.

Search is initially based on a standard search bar into which the user enters keywords to search. SortFix searches Google, Yahoo and DMOZ for these search terms. SortFix then provides suggested additional keywords ‘Power Words‘ to assist in narrowing the search query. Power Words are suggested keywords which help full-question queries yield more accurate and relevant results.

The user decides which ’Power Words’ are relevant to the search and which ones are definitely not. Drag and drop the relevant ’Power Words’ to the ‘Add to Search’ basket and drag the irrelevant words to the ‘Remove from Search’ basket. Then click search to see your refined search results. Any ‘power word’ which requires further defining can be dragged to the ‘dictionary’ box and a short and accurate definition is displayed.

I typed in “asthma” as my search term. The initial search result returned 4,5000,000 results. The Power Word suggestions helped me to refine my initial search with diagnosis, management, research, hospital and treatment options. After a minute of refining I was able to reduce the search results to 23 - of which 21 were relevant.

In addition to the basic interface SortFix offers an array of “Expert” options for the advanced user, including synonym (and/or) searches and a “query tree” which displays search history.

SortFix is in its early stage of development and constantly improving - but it is certainly a fun and entertaining way to perform a basic search. Overall I found this a useful addition to the search paradigm and will certainly be trying the more advanced features next.

Source: sandnsurf

…and now a special Christmas greeting from SortFix: