WISEnut Finally Goes Online

Is it Better than Google?

[ijan]

I have just discovered that WISEnut ( [wisenut.com...] ) is finally online and serving users. After trying a few searches and the WISEguide feature, I would confidently say it is better than Google. I have never thought a search engine better than the already great Google would arrive that soon. WISEnut indexes almost 1.5 billion pages, and the relevance of results is quite impressive (and I mean it). If you check the WISEguide box, the results will automatically be categorized into categories similar to NorthernLight, but the category labels and the contents of the categories are actually useful (I mean it again :)). Best of all you can see the number of entries in every category.

Here is a simple search result for the keywords F-Prot for DOS ('for' is ignored by WISEnut like Google):

31,977 results:

Anti Virus (8)
F-Prot for DOS (3)
Virus Scanners (3)
AntiVirus Software (5)
Others (152)

Impressive, isn't it?

Another feature I like most is the [See x more pages from this site] feature. Yes, this is not new, but like the WISEnut categories you can see the number of relevant pages, and the relevant pages are actually relevant.

Wow! What can I say other than competition is good.

[Froggyman]

1,495,332,308 Web pages and counting!

I'm doubtful...

Definately NOT Google quality.

[Brett_Tabke]

Looks very promising! They'll have a ways to go to think about challenging Google.

Results:

Relavancy looks pretty good other than the descriptions - way too short.

URL's, very difficult to read and since the descriptions are so short, the url is the greatest factor in determining "clickability". Extremely hard on the eyes. Won't use the engine for this reason alone.

Oh joy, more ransom note results. What crosses search engineers minds to think this is usable? This is irrelevant nonhelpful info. I want a meta description - that's what it is there for.

Glad there is no click through counter.

Looks like it has great coverage. Every site of mine and clients were in there (50-60k pages).

Crawling dynamic urls - helpful.

There crawler ip's don't resolve..boo hiss.

Pretty good speed, but we'll see how it does in a month or two after some load.

Worth watching...

[sean orourke]

I'm intrigued.

Results:
Not too shabby, especially for a first look. Most promising new SE since...

Display:
Preferences include an option for 100 results per page, always a plus in my book. Throw in expanded display preferences (i.e. highlighted keywords, meta description, or both) and it gets shuffled it into the search mix.

Dollars:
This is the big question, perhaps the only question.

"WISEnut has also designed an innovative way to enable users to customize search results and to empower portals to generate revenues." -- from the wisenut.com 'About' section.

That sentence probably sounded better when the portal war was not a war of attrition. Do they know something we don't? I hope so.

Definitely intrigued.

[chiyo]

relevancy looks very good to me. A great plus (for us) is that they are one of the few engines to pick up our "real home page" rather than the domain root. Our domain default page is a short table of contents, with strong links to our daily updating bigger "real home page". All the links were redone 12 months ago to link all the old "Home" references to the real home page, rather than the default. Now the real home page has 20 times more internal links back to it than the default. Granted external links are still mainly to the default domain page, but this engine has been one of the first smart enough to realise where our best content is.

Seems to be a bit of a "wise nut"...

[skipper]

Hard to believe what the Internet needs is another search engine, when the ones already in business for a year or more are having trouble staying in business. Oh well, keeps the mind busy, and the task challenging to stay on top of it all. Thanks for the post.

[Laurent]

About the number of web pages, it change not every day, but last week this number had increased, but i don't remember the last number, so personnaly, I can't say if the web pages really increase.

Do you saw that Teoma is online too?
(in beta test)
http://www.teoma.com

What do you think about it?

Laurent

[henki]

I am in love. :)
This is a great search engine, even from an international perspective. When searching for my name it has a smart catagory that is labeled internet marketing.

[x2r]

The "wiseguide" is cute but their quality doesn't seem that great and I'm a little sceptical of their size claims.
Try 'credit cards' for instance (tought query). Google returns 1.97M results starting with AmEx, firstusa, etc. Wisenut returns 81,128 results, all spam.
Has anyone found any queries where Wisenut has more or better results than Google?

[pathos]

The quality looked pretty bad for competitive queries like hotel reservations. I'm really skeptical about their size claim too. If you search for random technical info, they hardly have any results. I don't know which 1.5 billion pages they crawled, but it's not the pages I usually search for :)

[scott]

>Do you saw that Teoma is online too ?

Never been crawled by them, and I found pages in there that I KNOW I only submitted to Ink.

[sean orourke]

I think is a bit early to knock WISEnut for not being on par with Google. Who is? A few tweaks might make things far closer. Not an example of more or better results, but the "XML" SERP looks very similar to Google.

<spam>They are susceptible to spam, but so is Google... and every other search engine. When it comes to spamproofing, there might be a tendency to hope for the best instead of preparing for the worst. Let's see how aggressive they are in cleaning it up.

<size>Seems to be overstated. Factors include: multiple results for the same page, wild & crazy "deep Web" links, etc. Let's see how aggressive they are in adding new content.

<notice> Got this message between some queries:
"Our servers are currently unavailable
due to enhancement and modification
of the WISEnut search engine."

<factoid>The order of keywords makes no difference in an unquoted search phrase. A search for Keyword1 Keyword2 will give the same results as Keyword2 Keyword1. Three keywords yields six combinations that all go to the same sites. Four keywords yields twenty four combinations that are funneled to a few lucky sites. This has could have huge implications if WISEnut becomes popular.

[Froggyman]

Robot Info
http://www.WISEnutbot.com

ZyBorg/1.0 ([e-mail];http://www.WISEnutbot.com)

[mikeneal]

Well, I am not impressed. While 100 or so of our 500 pages are indexed, they all have the description: ".Home Suggestion Search Introduction
Driving In Town Trip..."

They take the first few items on the web page (which happen to be navigation menu items in our case, the same on every page) and make it the description. I guess the META tag description concept is beyond their comprehension and or ability to index.

[ijan]

mikeneal,

Some of the best search engines around such as Google and Fast do not index meta description tags either.

[mikeneal]

Ijan:
Google has 480 of our 500 pages indexed and not one of them has the description containing the menu items at the top of the page, but rather, a description that makes sense to those searching. Fast has 493 of our web pages indexed and the descriptions are also relevant for the pages rather than the first 50 or so bytes of the web page (whic in our case, are menu items". Why does WISENut use just the first text it can find instead of something more intelegent? Am I designing my web pages incorrectly? (http://www.suvone.com )

Thanks.
Mike

[ijan]

mikeneal,
I've looked at your web site, and searched for 'suvone' at alltheweb, WISEnut and google. It seems that Fast has started to index description tags. Sorry about the misinformation. You're right about the low quality of the descriptions returned for your web site by WISEnut. But a few months ago, Fast was returning similar bad quality descriptions too. I think we should give some time to WISEnut because they are a new player that has just entered the search engine market.

[mikeneal]

Ijan:
Thanks for the input. We'll see what happens over time. Although I wonder about a company that has "1,495,332,308 Web pages and counting!". Is anybody there looking at the results? Would you suggest I check back with them when they have, say, 10 billion or so pages indexed?
Thanks
Mike

[Brett_Tabke]

Pop Quiz: which one will be around 2 years from now?

Wisenut: Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0
Teoma: Server: Apache/1.3.12 (Unix)

[ijan]

I don't know the answer, but ebay uses NT with IIS too. I don't think the preference of web server/OS really affects the quality of a web site. What really matters are the efficiency of the server side code, scalibility of the servers, and enough bandwith. I believe Unix/Apache is a better bet for low cost multi-server web sites though.

[toolman]

>>>Wisenut:
Server: Microsoft-IIS/5.0

They'll see the light when they try to expand their server farm.

[toolman]

I went looking for myself and then realized I'm not feeding these spiders the optimized pages. What a difference that really makes.

[Brett_Tabke]

Every major and most minor search engine attempts under windows have failed. Not a single major has survived trying windows. The only one that even attempts it is Hotbot and that is just a front end to all the Direct Hit and Ink *nix behind it. It is also why Hotbot is the slowest se on the net where it is not uncommon for 10second lag times during peak usage.

How many large sites have stuck with ms servers?

[engine]

For those interested, there are promising International results in the SERPs.

I welcome this new resource and will be watching it closely to see how it develops.

[grnidone]

Interesting. Wisenut has a lot of investors out of Korea.

This might be an engine which will be a big contendor in the Asian market.

-G

[grnidone]

Wisenut is also pay to play:

http://www.wisenut.com/partnering.html

-G

[Brett_Tabke]

Nice find grnidone.

[Aaron]

Hmm looks like ODP results play a big part.

[littleman]

<quote>
The search results and the ranking of results are not influenced by sponsorships.
</quote>

I couldn't find anything, to verify this, but that would indicate that the ads will be unassociated with the results, maybe they will be set up similar to google's text ads?

[dogboy]

I seem to be doing well there, so I like it:)