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I have checked several industries and the results range from marginally better(or slightly worse) to far superior all across the board.
My own site is kicking butt on numerious search terms and phrases. I'm in the top 5 on an important highly competitive keyword.
Yet I dont think i'm getting any hits from AllTheWeb. If I ranked the same in Google as I do in AllTheWeb, i'd be getting thousands of search engines referrals(on just my main keyword) per day.
I suspect that when Google gets straightened out i'll be ranked just as good or maybe even better than in ATW, but it's the wait that's so frustrating.
I wish users would experiment with search engines and not just mindlessly choose Google, MSN, etc...
Because she knows that the results are different. If AlltheWeb would try to market themselves as a destination search engine - which before, they were purposefully NOT doing so while owned by FAST Search & Transfer, then perhaps they might have a bigger market share.
Now, though - it seems they are working to becomming more of a 'name' in their own right, and adding all sorts of cool gizmos for webmasters.
Personally, I find their advanced search to be quite good, but their lack of index size (being about a billion pages shy of Google...) makes it hard for me to use their search engine, knowing I might be missing something.
A lot of people may not use them for the same reason. Also, consider that their XML CPC program in the US is NON marked advertising, something that even the FTC said was NOT right.
I expect that to change with time, and until then, it's a major stumbling block for me to use them - knowing I might be clicking an ad, and knowing there is no way to accurately tell the difference.
Now, sites with actual content much more often outrank keyword gibberish pages, and the top 25 results generally include the most important sites for a query.
That said, still too much non-authority words-on-a-page sites, still not as good as Teoma or Google-before-this-month, but certainly in the ballpark as the current Google mess, and clearly improving.
I know the ATW index is smaller, but I also know that Google loses sites fairly often, not just ours, others that I expect to see that go AWOL for a month and then come back again in the next update. Never noticed this on ATW.
And yes, I also like ATW 'coz it puts all our sites in the top 5 for their major keywords and phrases. I don't do anything deliberate to try to get there. These sites are designed for the user not the SEs. ATW lists them well straight off, to get good listings on Google I have to add lots of non-user related optimisation efforts. But there's very little in the way of visitors from ATW (actually loads more from AV) which seems a real shame for such a good SE.
I sound like I should start a fan club...! :-)
They all outranked me, so, by definition, they're spam. Seriously, I believe ATW currently has a far worse spam problem than Google.
ATW still has a long way to go.
It is nice to have both options available.
Personally, I find their advanced search to be quite good, but their lack of index size (being about a billion pages shy of Google...) makes it hard for me to use their search engine, knowing I might be missing something.
In my research I have to look up obscure phrases with expected number of results less than 100. I start with Google and then I search on ATW because I have been able to find those phrases in places Google never heard of! Actually using ATW gives me an advantage over others because they all use Google or its derivatives exclusively.
This is a real good point. Something too often unappreciated.
