New Search Engines Cuil and SearchCloud try to unseat Google
When it comes to web searching the search engine at the top of the list for most people is Google. In fact it presently commands over 60 percent of the search market followed by Yahoo and MSN. So when I heard that some ex-Google employees have taken steps to create a search engine of there own I had to sit up and take notice.
The new search engine is called Cuil and presently boasts to be the search engine with the highest number of pages in their index…..over 120 billion and counting. The founders of Cuil include former Google employees Anna Patterson, Russell Power and Louis Monier. Patterson and Power worked on Google’s “TeraGoogle” search index and Monier specialized in search engine design. To further stand out from Google, Cuil is experinenting with a magazine style spread for their search results. With this style they have their search results presented within three columns on the webpage varying from the single-template, 10 result per page results that Google offers. Maybe with this style webmasters may have an equal opportunity to get their website links clicked once they show up on the first page. (Just maybe). Right now only testing will provide answers to the question of user responsiveness to the layout of the results page. Presently Google’s pages show greater clicks for the first 3 results on the page than any other, meaning a lot more traffic for showing up in the top 3 for a search term.
On a side-note, Google software engineers Jesse Alpert and Nissan Hajaj, in a blogpost on the official google blog http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/07/we-knew-web-was-big.html seemed to make pre-emptive comments related to Cuil’s insistence that they have the largest index for search engines on the web. They said that Google scanned more than a trillion webpages but didn’t index all of them because “many of them are similar to each other, or represent auto-generated content …. that isn’t very useful to searchers.” Google has only about 8.2 billion web pages in their index.
Another new search engine came into the fray this week. This one is based off the new search initiative that allows users to create their own search engine using Yahoo BOSS. It is called SearchCloud and it allows searchers to specify which keyword or keyword phrase is more important. The idea behind it is that with a weighting going to each search term the searcher includes, it will improve search relevance in relation to that specific user. However, it remains to be seen how well this user influenced search works in practice. Check out a review about the search engine from TechCrunch here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/28/searchcloud-weights-keywords-to-improve-search-relevance/
Check out a video on how to use SearchCloud here:
Enter SEO Contests and Sharpen Your Skills
One way to learn more about SEO and sharpen your skills to use later in your online promotions is by entering SEO contests. This is usually hosted by experts in the field to create buzz about a topic or website or for analytical purposes. Besides generating attention it can be a great learning tool for beginners (newbies) and also be done for fun and to get great prizes.
The folks over at SEONoobs.com recently launched a contest about 3 weeks ago for SEO newbies to rank best for the phrase “Yicrosoft Directory”. It’s a 30 day SEO Challenge to see who can come out as the #1 organic listing for the keyphrase “Yicrosoft Directory”. The contest ends March 4th so it might be too late to enter and win but by just looking at the listings for “Yicrosoft Directory” in the search engines you can get an idea of the methods that people are using for their SEO campaign.
In case you wonder why they used that keyphrase; Microsoft recently put in an offer to Yahoo! to buy out their company and merge it with Microsoft for a cool $44.6 Billion. Seems the main reason they did it was to try and compete with Google in the search engine arena. Yahoo! looks to have rejected the offer so far. Of course all this has created a buzz around the internet with different websites and videos. People have been even created mock logos as to what the company might become. Maybe MicroYahoo or Microhoo? Who’s to tell? In case you missed this bit of news here’s a report of it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDrDITVJMls&NR=1
Typing in the contest’s keyphrase in Google returns some 52,000 normal results and 21,100 results in anchor (meaning the phrase was put in quotation marks ie “yicrosoft directory”). But whichever way you look at it the contestant who leads (as of this posting), owns the site Yicrosoftdirectory.net. The next two rounding out the top three are Garrysoft.com and Yicrosoft-directory-online.com. Doing a quick check in Yahoo! tells me what I knew would be the main reason for these people leading the list. And the answer is one word folks….LINKS.
Breakdown of Top Five Contestants
SITE PAGES INLINKS
Yicrosoftdirectory.net 21 677
Garrysoft.com 11 2,470
Yicrosoft-directory-online.com 10 252
Yicrosoftdirectorygirl.com 25 1,330
Gh-yicrosoft.info 14 271
But why are the second placed and fourth placed listings not listed better? A quick look shows that the number one site has a lot more content (21 pages) than the 2nd placed. Ok…I hear you ask….So why does it still beat out the fourth placed site. Simple. The content that is on Yicrosftdirectory.net is a lot more optimized for the phrases “yicrosoft”, “directory” and “yicrosoft directory”. In fact it lists itself as a directory (probably gaining more reciprocal links from this method) accompanied with great content that repeatedly has “yicrosoft directory” in title tags and headers. It also is getting links from a more diverse set of sites (not just one site, like some of the others). And I didn’t check this but more than likely the links they received from sites have better authority and page rank according to Google
Why not check out this for yourself?…….Go to Yahoo! and in their search bar type in link:www.thesite.com (replace “thesite” with whatever site’s name is listed) and analyse the listings you see. It will give you an idea as to what to do for your own SEO promotion. Go ahead…….have some fun with this SEO thing
P.S. The reason I used Yahoo! to check the links is because they usually show a more accurate look of backlinks for most sites, once they’ve been indexed.
Like this post? Publish It On Your Own Blog