The way I search
In the past months I noticed a shift in the way I search things over the internet. I started using vertical search engines (like YouTube or IMDB for music/videos related topics, Wikipedia for articles, BBC for news, or Wolfram for scientific data) more often in cases when I definitely know what I’m looking for. For these tasks I don’t use Yahoo or Google search engines anymore because these give me too wide set of results often from categories that don’t interest me at all. The traditional search engines still do work fine when there is no evident place to look for a piece of information or data is scattered between multiple pages, but these are no more an entry point in searching for something.
Some wise people foreseen such a shift a couple of years ago and I see it becomes the case for me, an experienced internet user. It probably won’t be a case for beginners and casual internet users but since Google and Yahoo start to enhance search data with more contextual results it feels the change is about to happen.
Is this a case for you too?
Psi 9:16 am on June 15, 2009 Permalink |
Honestly, I generally still use Google even if I really indent to find something on Wikipedia… I think it’s just easier to type something in Firefox’s/Safari’s search field than to go to some website first and then do the search. So even if I specifically want information from Wikipedia, I type ” wikipedia” in the search field and click on the first result :) It’s just laziness, I guess… But this is how it works for me.
It doesn’t work in all cases though, e.g. if I’m looking for a video, I go to Youtube, because Google will only give me 1-2 video results. Although sometimes Youtube doesn’t show me that video because of some ridiculous copyright issues, in that case I go to Google and do the search there, and it shows me results from other video sites, which aren’t as restrictive.
Jakub Pawlowicz 8:26 pm on June 15, 2009 Permalink |
I guess it is laziness because the same thing was happening to me. However I then realized that it’s actually a waste of time as going directly to a page where I know the information is take less time. At least for me. I type quite fast ;-)
Jo B 1:17 pm on June 15, 2009 Permalink |
Is it possible to get a list of vertical search engines for highly specialized/categorized searches?
Jakub Pawlowicz 8:31 pm on June 15, 2009 Permalink |
Hi Jo! Once I read your question two things came to my mind – ask Wikipedia, and ask Google. I checked both and looks like Google gives Wikipedia as a first result. ;-) Anyway you may find these pages helpful:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vertical_search_engine
http://searchenginewatch.com/2156351
And still YouTube for audio and video, Wikipedia for articles, WolframAlpha for scientific data. Enjoy!