It’s a Search Engine Bonanza

The search market is a fascinating beast: Even though Google thoroughly dominates, there’s no lack of new players looking to grab a piece of the action.

Over the past couple of weeks, Microsoft’s Bing has captured a lot of attention but it’s just one of many new search engines that have appeared on the scene. Some are trying to go head to head with Google, some are focused on Twitter, and some have adopted a hybrid approach by focusing on real-time search.

Here’s a quick overview of some of the new players:

- Bing: Much to a lot of peoples’ surprise, Bing has resonated with users by offering a solid search experience and some interesting features such as related searches. The jury is still out whether Bing will help Microsoft establish a more solid search foothold but the fact it is receiving an enthusiastic welcome is a good sign.

- Topsy: A search engine that bases its results on Twitter ReTweets. It received critical acclaim from TechCrunch.

- CrowdEye: An interesting real-time search engine started by Ken Moss, who led the search engineering team at Microsoft. CrowdEye results feature links to popular stories, as well as the latest Twitter updates. Here’s a Webware review.

- OneRiot: Another player in the real-time search market, OneRiot based its results on the links people share on Twitter, Digg and other social sharing services so it can provide fresh content. OneRiot is definitely worth checking out – the service works quickly and the results are solid and relevant. It’s not a replacement to Google but a good complement.

- Wolfram: Lots of hype and excitement but Wolfram, to date, has been disappointing. After attracting a lot of blog coverage, Wolfram fell flat, mostly because it did a bad job of positioning itself, and failing to control the suggestion it was a Google-killer.

- Collecta: A real-time search engine, Collecta falls into the dreaded trap of over-hyping its service rather than letting happy users spread the world. Here’s its promo pitch on the home page: “Collecta is not like other search engines. The web is alive with real-time information. So why search a stale archive? Collecta monitors the update streams of news sites, popular blogs and social media, and Flickr, so we can show you results as they happen. Give it a try.”

My experiences with Collecta have been disappointing. For example, a search for Steve Jobs took several minutes to generate a result.

For more the search engine landscape, check out VentureBeat, which look at nine new real-time search engines.

Technorati Tags: bing, google, search engines