April 24, 2008

Searchme. I typically roll my eyes at Web 2.0 stuff, but this is actually kinda groovy.
posted by RalphTheDog 16 years ago
  • I'm pretty 2.0 jaded but that is something neat. Who are these guys? Hopefully not some Google skunkworks project, it'd be nice to see a new entrant in the search engine biz.
  • Definitely not Google... they're using a different search criteria. I know because my blog is the #11 result for "wendell" there (also #17 on Yahoo, #9 on Ask and #51 on MSN) but I paged through over a hundred "wendells" in SearchMe without finding any trace of ... ME!
  • Rather cool!
  • pretty cool...
  • Good grief, I wonder what criteria they're using? My site is usually #11-15 in Google results for the search "knitting blog." (A very competitive category - non-knitters, just take my word for it.) I wasn't even able to find my site in SearchMe. Sour grapes, you might suspect. But check this out, the first batch* of results includes:
  • Three posts to the Oregonian's knitting blog This is the only blog to be represented more than once. (No single blog should have more than one entry in a search result - so why this one? Did they have a larger ad spend?)
  • A "my blog has moved" page from Wendy's old URL. (This page must be at least 5 years old. It's definitely an antique. It contains no content. Why is it even showing up, much less in the top 10 results?)
  • A defunct knitting blog, which has been dead for many years.
  • An incredibly lame Squidoo Lens with a grand total of five (count 'em!) links.
  • About 20 knitting blogs that I've never heard of, and I do this for a living.
    • Conspicuously absent: all of the most popular knitting blogs (save Wendy Knits). Any search engine that doesn't return Stephanie Pearl-McPhee's blog anywhere in the first 30 results for "knitting blog" is obviously grossly mis-coded. There's a reason that Google's on top. They do search really well. I'm sure "knitting blogs" isn't a search term most people here are familiar with. Try something from your own area of expertise and see what happens. SearchMe is pretty, but completely useless. * "First batch" being defined as "As far as I was able to click before I got bored." Say 30-40.