Forum Moderators: open
So is it possible for a newcomer to take on the big boys. They would need a slick spider and ranking algo so that speed and accuracy were as efficient as the big boys. As with “back then”, all those years ago (OK 3-4 :)) it is still cheap and getting cheaper to buy hardware so if VC was available you could get round the load spreading. But how far would you need to go to make an impact, either in terms of money or hardware not forgetting the technical ability required?
Any comments?
Back over a year ago, google had 8- to 10-thousand servers. No telling how many they have now.
IMO, the biggest asset Google has isn't their quality of search, it's their ability to churn out good press about their quality of search. (If Fast had this press capability, the SEM world would have a decidely different look, again IMO.)
But, being a successful one-man band in another, much smaller category, the answer can be "yes."
Not that the cost of entry into the market is too high,
its that people don't bother to change once they are happy with results and results are generally good now.
Its Google, Yahoo, AOL, Lycos, AJ/AV as search starting point in the western world.
With Google, Inktomi, Fast, and hopefully Teoma and even Wisenut as only possible search result feeders being shuffled around depending on deals and investment input.
Some local country/language based SE's will gradually loose even more market share. I'd say AJ and AV are next for loosing out completely as starting point/SE..
Just to fire the discussion ;)
Google proved that a pure search engine could make money, so now there is a lot more competion, both for them and for any newcomers.
the problem is how joe public perceive brands;
UK for vacuum cleaner for years was Hoover people just didn't a vacuum cleaner anything else today I hear people refer to vacuum cleaners as dyson's and hoover's but never panasonic's (which is want i own).
you see google been referenced on television "people googling" people a parties talking about googling on the internet.
I had one client that i was selling SEO to explain to me that she been googling Altavista,Aol and google for her company and could find it could I help.
If we are not careful google will replace the word search on the internet, never under estimate the power of the public.
DaveN
Local SEs/directories have the advantage of being local whereas the bigger search engines have to rely on their algorithm to tell if a site is relevant. I am currently running a location analysis program on .ie Irish websites - so far over 50% of .ie Irish websites are hosted on IP ranges outside of Ireland.
Now extrapolating these figures for Irish owned com/net/org domains would tend to indicate that a small country's websites are going to get lost in the global morass of CNO and most will never make it into the 'pages from $country' index because they are not hosted on that country's IP ranges and do not end in that country's domains.
Of course there is always the possibility that the big search engines could get smart.
Regards...jmcc
[1] Yellowpack: From supermarket marketing - The supermarket's own generic brand of a popular product.
IMO that is a question of search result quality and index size. 150,000,000 indexed pages sounds not that big for me. Those indexed pages are just a very small part of the internet. Moreover the size is stagnating. The spider seems to index only per Add-URL-Form entered pages.
NN
its that people don't bother to change once they are happy with results and results are generally good now.
I am with you all the way on that. Google, will remain the market leader, as long as it keeps ahead of the game.
Yahoo was predominant, but took its eye off the ball, people looked for other Search Engines, and before you know it Google, best of the then bunch, is in the lead.
As long as Google gives the punter "good results" then the punter will not change. Sure All the Web and indeed Gigablast give good, and in some cases marginally better, results. But why should the technically dyslexic user change from Google if they are happy with it?
This is what the average person is looking for on the net, in terms of information. Yahoos downfall was this IMHO because their searches were showing old pages, and relavancy. Pay for click services will fall into this soon. Majority of users are not "purchasers" at this time, and will use a search engine that gives them the most relavent information. The recent moves to generate income by all the major engines will leave room for an inovative solution to appear and challenge the accepted boudaries today. It is just going to be harder than before.
I havent seen any evidence that G! is, or is even thinking of moving to PPC service.
Agreed that would be the end of their special competitive advantage and bring them back to competing with the pack. There are many possible changes in Google - ad options, maybe a special subscription G! with useful features such as email alerts, no ads and more options; and things like Froogle and News etc but I dount that PPC is one of them.
Its this continual change and flexibility from all the R&D that means that Google, and SE's like Teoma and Fast etc are far ahead of things like GigaBlast. Real innovation takes money. Giga is really only known by webmasters, possibly as they got some good exposure here but more importantly they did/do instant indexing, providing webmasters with instant (though fleeting) gratification.
Do other new engines have a chance...yes if google moves into the pack of this method. That is what I meant to say:) Search engines are only as good as the users percieve them to be. If relevant information gets skewed to lower rankings in any engine, determined by $ only, it is my opinion that, that particular search service will be shunned by the majority of web users if another starts up to fill that void.
Whether it is possible for a search engine to survive longterm under this philosophy is another matter altogether.
Just ran a couple submissions through and thought that he stopped the real time spidering. It's still there, just need to give it a few moments. If there is one thing that will drive that site, it will be webmasters and the real time spidering. And, the webmaster community is fairly large. If you take into account the number of clients we service, that's even a larger number.
All it takes for a venture like this is the support of a large community. When you give that large community something it has been craving since infoseek, you've opened up some eyes.
Haven't really dug deep into the results but they look fairly clean. A little too googlish from my perspective. I doubt he will ever compete at the Google level, but I'd be willing to bet with a little bit of support, he could claim a spot in the top 10, maybe.
P.S. There have been many one man bands that have left their mark in history!
All it takes for a venture like this is the support of a large community
I believe that is only half of the equation, the other (more important half) is that the world out there has to become dissatisfied enough with Google to get them out of their lethergy and on to looking for an alternative.
Only then will other search engines stand a chance.
How many of us actually try AlltheWeb, Gigablast, etc in the "normal" course of looking for information (in other words when we want new information and not just playing!)
I would hazzard a guess, that in most cases its feed the query into the toolbar and press the Google button :(
i think you should start creating indexes on pages yahoo nor google has listed at all.
The "invisible" web or the niche market is a good way in. Then you may get a easier foothold than competing head on with a brand like google.
Niche market is probably better. The major search engines have one specific flaw or vulnerability - they cannot reliably locate a website in a particular country. I am working on this problem (determining what is and is not a European website) and it is a very complex one. I don't think that the ranking/crawling model used by the big search engines is good enough to resolve all sites. The reason for this is that there are many sites that have no links, either inbound or outbound. Also the number of websites (com/net/org/info/biz) not hosted on the IP ranges of a specific country will not appear in the results of a country specific search.
As the internet fragments, the website:country problem is going to get worse for the bigger SEs.
Regards...jmcc
>>>Google will be challenged as they move to the pay per click service
>I havent seen any evidence that G! is, or is even thinking of moving to PPC service.
er ... what're Google's "Sponsored Links" then?
Or have I missed something?
Cheers and Hooroo
JP
I think it's the real time spidering and inclusion that will kill it. Want to see how your changes impact the position? Make a few and submit. :)
Much too easy to manipulate this engine right now and given the almost real time feedback cracking the algo is a matter of a little bit of patience and some determined analysis.
Yes,
Sponsored (Premium?) links are not pay per click. Adwords are
I should have made clear that i was talking about the main index - I assmed that we were talking about that rather than peripheral advertising on the side. Ater all, when the man in the street talks about "google" its their main search that they are talking about, the one you get from entering your terms in the box in the center of their front page.
If someone can manage to do this they can take the lead.
Stale information is like stale bread ... you only eat it if there's nothing else.
When the earthquake hit Mexico last night, I wanted instant information. I couldn't find any details on the Web. I had to go hit the USENET to get some hot details. If someone could have put up some details on a website, then hit the submission button on an instant spidering search engine, the world could get that critical information long before the news media could churn it out. If there was such a search engine, you better believe it would become habit forming.
If it's spam you're worried about, just limit the instant spidering submissions to one or two a day per website.
