Soup of the Day

Search Wars : Episode 3

Google has had a good reign as the leading search engine on the Internet, used as the default search tool by millions, no billions of people every day. Since it’s inception in 1998 it has grown exponentially killing off the likes of AltaVista and putting Lycos and Yahoo! firmly in their place. Microsoft’s MSN search was forgotten until they relaunched it last year. In a strange way, Google Search has become a monopoly of the people because it is only through billions of users deciding to use Google every day, rather than another engine, that Google enjoys this status.

Sensibly Google now is spreading its wings, launching new and innovative products that they hope will keep people coming back to Google for more. A lot of the new products have been fun but ultimately not very useful. One that is pure genius is Google Maps (Google Local), which leads straight onto Google Earth. Google Earth is the ultimate globe every kid wanted, because you can see the world as a whole or zoom right down to street level and see your own garden. But the real power of Google Local/Earth is the ability to tie search into it, so if you search for a electricians while hoving a few miles above your house, the nearest electricians will appear on the map, providing their full contact details and a link to their site, if one exists.

But Google Search is what I’m writing about. Google Search has become a victim of its own success now. The things that made Google so great in the beginning are starting to be blurred, partly by the size of the Google Search database and partly because Google is now a NASDAQ trading company and it’s all about profit - although anyone you ask on the Google campus would deny that. Google recently set up a regional sales office just two minutes walk from us on Oxford Road, Manchester. This is the only one in the UK outside of London, although I am sure they’ll be more. But the office, which is very large, is purely for sales and marketing.

With respect the the Google database and crawl (the process of crawling across the internet recording urls and content), it is starting to become slow and irrelevant. A lot of web architects, myself included, have noticed how long Google takes to respond to new content - six months of more. Even using Google’s new XML Sitemap API, the system is just slow. But the problem is, web designers are only a fraction of the users who use Google and to the rest of the world, Google will appear to be fine.

The other problem with Google is that they are American. Not that being American is a problem, but it does mean that Google provides a very American orientated service - my address on Google Local is competely the wrong way around and Google aren’t interested in changing it any time soon. Google also have recently launched in China, albeit screened by the Chinese government - so much for freedom of information.

When we look at the situation this way, it becomes obvious that there is a huge gap in the market. People are starting to want a search that goes deeper and wider into the ether to get results that really are relevant to us, especially if we’re not paying for Google advertising. One such solution that I have discovered is Exalead, a European search solution. I have only recently started using Exalead, but I have been very impressed. Not only is it up to date and relevant, it has not only crawled my site fully, but my blog site as well - something Google hasn’t even touched yet.

Exalead Search is currently being fine tuned before a new offshoot is launched later this year. The new system is powered by Exalead, but will be further refined using Web 2.0 technologies throughout and will be - Exalead hope - a European Google killer. One of the many advantages of Exalead is that from the ground up, languages are supported. This has probably something to do with the owners being mostly French, however the advantages are immediately obvious. Do a search for ‘Lemons’ for example and the search will find you all the pages about ‘Lemons’, plus ‘Citrons’ and whatever Lemon is in German, Italian, Dutch, and so on. I haven’t tried it yet, but I am sure a search for ‘framboises’ will return a lot of French pages about tartes and other lovely dishes, plus English pages about raspberries - just tried it and it does.

I am sure that Exalead probably won’t be the Google killer they hope it will, but I think if anything it will make Google relook at their search technology and give it a much needed rethink. Exalead entering the market can only be a good thing for all, whether you like it or not.