BlogHer - Can you be won away from Google search? - Comments

My personal blog

Virginia DeBolt — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 09:25:04 -0500

tests (at Web Teacher) with Lijit haven't been what I wanted, either. But I've found it useful on BlogHer.

To Lijit's credit, when I wrote them about the results I was seeing, they made an effort to improve it. So far, things are no better, but I like the fact that they are responsive to my concerns.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

Re: FreeFind

bobafifi — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:32:42 -0500

In addition to spidering your site on a daily basis, the site map and statistical reporting I've found very helpful too. Also, the FreeFind search is in many ways a backup of my sites and over the years, has 'been there' to keep things going during down times with my host.

I have not been impressed with Lijit

Kalyn Denny — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 08:03:05 -0500

Just as one small example, I wrote a series of posts about Cooking with Fresh Herbs, same title every post, followed by the name of the herb. Yet when I search for them using Lijit, only nine of the twelve posts come up. I've also had the same lack of results searching for other topics I've written about on BlogHer.com.

I do see how the ability to search the BlogHer Network is a nice feature though, so maybe that's enough of a benefit to make it worth it.

Kalyn Denny
Kalyn's Kitchen

FreeFind

Virginia DeBolt — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 07:15:06 -0500

I've used FreeFind myself with good success for a number of years. They index your site as often as you want and report to you as often as you want.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

I've been using cuil.com

kazari — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 00:14:42 -0500

Mostly because I love the interface.

Re: Can you be won away from Google search?

bobafifi — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 23:31:23 -0500

I use Google for most of my searches on the web. For my own sites, I've been using http://www.FreeFind.com for eight years now! It's great. I think Google's Custom Search Site is excellent provided your site doesn't update very often. However, or those sites that do update often, (like mine), then Google's CSE is not a good match.

For database driven sites that use MySQL, the search is first rate and certainly has the *potential* to satisfy most queries. Unfortunately, I've found that wanting your MySQL searches to be as good as the results provided by a professional search company (like FreeFind), can be quite an education and for many, simply not worth the effort. I hadn't heard of Lijit before, thanks Virginia.

-Bob

Great points!

micah — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 22:06:11 -0500

Alanna, those are great points about Google Custom Search Engine. Just two points that you might not know about Lijit (where I work), one is that with CSE you have to manual manage the list of sites that are included (in essence, its a subset of Google's index), and therefore all the content must meet Google's anti-spam criteria. Lijit on the other hand, automatically includes your Blogroll, and social content (which CSE does not), and assumes that all content is trusted (since its yours).

That does often create two different sets of results, and we are working very hard to make our results as relevant as possible.

In addition, if you want, you can have Lijit use Google CSE as its index of choice so that you kinda get the best of both worlds!

Would love to hear any suggestions you might have - micah@lijit.com.

Thanks you.

Looks like

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:01:37 -0500

it's Google for you.

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

Google also offers a Custom Search Engine --

Alanna Kellogg — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:55:29 -0500

-- which searches only select sites, not the entire web. It's good for communities who want to establish their own search groups, and is what we use for Food Blog Search and what I use for the search engine on my own sites. It's imperfect, I think, for that purpose (though better than Lijit whose algorithms are unclear and offer up such different results than Google that at least to my mind, it's flawed) since it ranks only by authority and offers no other sort criteria. (In contrast, Google blog search allows sorting results by authority or by date.)

FWIW, I figured out last week that nearly all my AdSense revenue comes from the search pages so will be pulling the actual ads from my sites any day now.

Alanna Kellogg
Kitchen Parade &
A Veggie Venture

Hmmm,

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 14:03:25 -0500

Looks like Microsoft Word scruff. We'll just pretend it isn't there. :)

Virginia DeBolt
BlogHer Technology Contributing Editor
Web Teacher
First 50 Words

?

repliderium.com — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:26:54 -0500

Sorry- have no idea what the scoop with that reply was.....?

Google

repliderium.com — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 13:26:10 -0500

Normal
0

false
false
false

MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ansi-language:#0400;
mso-fareast-language:#0400;
mso-bidi-language:#0400;}

I agree- the specialized sites are great for those who need
them but I think the general masses will always "google it". The fact
that this word is part of our language stands to that.

Good post, Virginia

Denise — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 09:00:39 -0500

I think some of the hybrid, specialized search options are fantastic, particularly when you have some specific criteria for search results. For general everyday search, I'm still a google fan, though.

~Denise
BlogHer Community Manager

Flamingo House Happenings

Can you be won away from Google search?

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 08:48:35 -0500

Perhaps you've noticed that the search feature on BlogHer now has a Lijit logo in the search box. Under that, you see two options. Search blogher.com or search the BlogHer network. If you search the BlogHer network, you find posts on your search words found in any blog that is part of the BlogHer network.

The Lijit search is perfect for BlogHer. It helps BlogHer fulfill its key mission of locating and linking to the world of women's blogs.

I've been looking at Lijit search ever since Amy Gahran mentioned it at BlogHer08. For the people who can make it work as intended, such as BlogHer, it succeeds in widening search results for your own writing or for the writing of a whole network of women.

Lijit isn't the type of search engine that searches the entire web, like Google. It is meant to search a specific network of information. It's competing with Google in terms of "search my blog" searches, but not for "search the web" searches.

There are search engines that compete directly with Google. Two of them recently announced changes that they hope will help them move eyeballs away from Google to their brand of search. The two announcing revamped search this week are Ask.com and Hakia.com.

In Welcome to the all new Ask.com, Ask touts the fact that they claim to provide the best answers to your questions, faster and with fewer clicks.

Svetlana Gladkova from profy commented on the changes in Ask.com Rolls Out Yet Another Overhaul to Make Search Faster and More Relevant. She wrote,

So today we are seeing yet another attempt by Ask to achieve more impressive results in the search market by increasing speed and relevance of search results. Today’s overhaul reflects results of work that was initiated in January. Starting today users will experience reduction of search results download speed by 30% which is supposed to be the most important result of the overhaul. The majority of changes introduced today will remain invisible to users since they are about increasing the number of pages Ask indexes along with some improvements of the ranking algorithm (no additional details on that unfortunately).

But the most visible result of the overhaul is replacing cluttered 3-column view for search results with 2-column one where the largest space is given to the traditional list of links to the relevant pages while the smaller right column also offering some related search phrases that could probably help find better results. The search results column also offers a selection of tabs for user to choose what type of content is needed for the search - general web pages, images, news, or Q&A where results are served from various places that answer questions related to your search term. Searching other sections is also possible via the drop-down More menu.

According to an article in eWeek, Ask.com Sails into Semantic Search to Differentiate from Google, the differences are most noticable in searches for categories such as entertainment, health, jobs and reference. According to the article, the Ask search uses a different method of determining relevance and handling word order. I tested Ask and Google with this search: artists in New Mexico who use collage.

Google did better with this search. Google listed some art schools, but actually had a New Mexico collage artist on the first page of results. Ask listed general New Mexico information, two listings for Democracy in New Mexico, and one art site on the first page of results. The sponsored results on Ask were better—art schools and art galleries. Maybe if I'd asked Ask.com about health or a job the results would be different.

The other revamped search engine trying to lure you away from your reliance on Google is Hakia.com. Vanessa Fox, at Search Engine Land, mentions Hakia's new search twist in Hakia Relaunches site with “Trusted Results.” She explains:

Today at SMX East, natural language search engine Hakia has launched a new search experience that enables searchers to view categorized results, as well as view “Trusted” Results” from “Credible Sites”.

The Trusted Results program is an initiative Hakia has developed with information professionals and librarians. . . .

So far, these results are available for health, medical, and environmental topics and they are looking to expand coverage.

CJ, at Science for SEO, explains further in Hakia's new stuff:

They've added the "credible sites" tab, where you can look at results from authorities, such as edu, gov and such sites, and they're asking librarians to suggest sites and "information professionals" (I'm not sure who that covers). The resources must be current, peer reviewed, non-commercial and authentic (or at least fulfill most of these requirements).

For now you can only use it for the topics of the environment, health and medicine. The sites are by experts, although anyone can submit a resource.

Hakia's search results are noticebly different. A series of tabs across the top of the results offers these topics: All results, Credible sites, News, Images, and Meet Others. (When you click Meet Others, you can open a chat room on your topic.) On the results page, you see sections of the page devoted to categories such as Web Results, News Results, and Images.

I gave Hakia and Google a test. I searched for "what prevents stomach pain."

This time, I think the prize goes to Hakia. I especially thought the credible sites tab was valuable. There is so much misinformation and snake oil in health areas that some trustworthiness in results seems valuable. I'm not saying the results on Google were bad or less trustworthy, but I don't know. I'd have to do the work of evaluating the links myself to decide. Hakia did the work for me.

To sum up, you might want to consider replacing the Google search on your blog with one by Lijit, and you might like using Hakia or Ask to search for information in specific categories. But I think most of us are still going to rely on Google for most things. What do you think?