Monday, February 28, 2005

Searching and Search Engine wishlist

Google is my fav, kinda obsessive about it, guess the lack of graphics (a plus), speed, and reasonable accuracy of results are the main reasons but its far from perfect. Clustering is a big thing and sorting is another and neither is something that google seems to have much (if any) of. I did find software that only works with IE that will group google listings together, but is still slower than google and doesn't "feel" convinient (don't ask why)

I have found Clutsy, and a vivisimo (which run clutsy, and again, this only works with IE and is still slower than google), nice in that it groups/clusters sites; that helps save a bunch of time but at the same time both services are slow.

I heard of Snap but it seems they have some "issues" but can't remember what, after having gone to the site I can say its a bit on the slow side but I like the clustering (is everyone *except* google doing this?) and the ability to sort on the fly, very nice.

At the moment the best thing I have found is Copernic Agent Professional which costs mad amounts of money (not worth it, just use a combination of google, snap, and clutsy [or for more results than clutsy use the vivisimo toolbar]) and requires either an Internet2 conneciton or lots of patience. It will search multiple search engines, cluster results, take out multiple enteries, summarize, analyze, etc your results, its the Rolls-Royce of regular web search at a Pinto speed.