Wikia
Source: Tom's Guide | Keywords: Google, Powerset, Cuil | Themes: The Internet
8. Wikia
Wikia
www.wikia.com Strong: The ability to customize search results and make them more relevant makes Wikia a great search engine. Weak: Current search result pages simply aren’t as reliable as those found with Clusty or Google. Somewhat like Mahalo, but with a far better implementation of “human-powered search,” Wikia is one of the best alternative search engines in the business and combines strong results with human opinions to create a stellar experience.
After inputting a query into Wikia’s search box, it displays the top results and includes a box to the right of those to show what kind of editing has been performed most recently for the query. Along with that, it also gives you the option to edit, annotate, spotlight, comment on or delete a particular search result, as well as rate it based on its relevance to your query.
For simple search queries like “dog,” Wikia performed extremely well and easily offered some of the most relevant results you will ever find in a search engine. It not only linked to the AKC.org page, but also linked directly to the Wikipedia dog page, which effectively eliminates the need for Powerset altogether.
But for more complex searches where I asked to find a dog pound in my area, Wikia didn’t fare so well and tended to miss some of the more relevant pages I quickly and easily found with services like Clusty or Google. Yet, it allows one to correct search results, recommend new sites and edit existing pages that can be fixed in no time with Wikia, while relevance can be restored where other services would still be missing out. 
And it’s that kind of customization (or “contributions” as the company calls it) that makes Wikia such a compelling service. It may not be the most relevant search engine and you’ll probably want to use Google or Clusty if you’re in a rush, but if you’re willing to put in the time and help the community, you can get lost in Wikia, as you do your part to make it as accurate and relevant as possible. And in the process, the search engine becomes more reliable as you continue to use it. Watch out for this search engine – it could be a major contender at some time in the future.
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Heya,
Seeing as how google works perfectly fine, has gmail, already searches through all the same things and has a simple powerful interface as well as igoogle for customization, I'm not really certain why any article should ever be called `should we ditch google' as if something were wrong with it.
The title is more like something I'd expect surrounding a microsoft product. Not google.
And I'm not a google fan boy, I'm just random internet user number 7 billion and think it's great to have alternatives, but there's no reason to make a slandery type of title to introduce it.
Very best,
That's a great point
'it's great to have alternatives, but there's no reason to make a slandery type of title to introduce it.'
I am soo with you malveaux!! Google kicks ass period. ditch microsoft Office should be the story for google docs!!!! WOOT WOOT !! New and good article! Yes, you may take my idea TH!! hehe
This clusty thing seems alright, I'll admit I like the filter menu on the left-hand side which groups sites into subject categories.
I've tried a multitude of searches, the top 10 correspond similar to those of google, and the search is equally as fast. Overall I'd say they're comparable, not enough to drop Google like a sack of potatoes though.
Over all it seems to be a worthy alternative, much more worthy than quoole or quile, or whatever the heck that last site was, I can't even remember the name correctly, horrible top 10 hits, and horrid search times.
Cuil* its at the top of this article even
Right now nothing is better than Google.
Almost and as good as don't cut it.
By the way what Toms article leaves out the conclusion?
It's easier to read the comments than the article.
Speaking of dumping MS Office, done that. I now use Open Office, it works great.
Thanks for the Powerset mention. You might want to also check out the republished Wikipedia pages (click through on any of the links and notice that we republish that page). We have lots of enhancements on that page to make your experience better. Maybe you should do a follow up article with companies trying to innovate on the Wikipedia experience, though certainly not with the intention of getting people to "ditch" Wikipedia =)
-mark, powerset product manager
you forgot google.com you you you....wont say it.
Searches tried:
UL, UL 790 (an engineering standard), venture bros season 3 torrent, cello music, tomshardware
each of these is reflected in my comment below.
clusty has some interesting things that google doesn't. However, it is not that accurate. I dont' know what searches you've done but I've done everything from generic to politically sensitive issues and found far more accurate results on google.
Cuil, is completely useless and the amount of results is a lie/often overstated. They will take 1 result and turn it into "1500" somehow by counting every image and link on a website as another result for the same website. You can't get more than 50 pages deep on cuil, it simply won't let you. Whoops! I think the total results is probably in the realm of 200 thousand.
Kartoo, won't even work without flash enabled. I refuse to play into the need for javascript or flash just to do a damn search. It is a text based search we are doing.
Mahalo is so inaccurate it's retarded. I get like 6 results for stuff, but it does give me the option to "Create" the page, whatever that means. As you editors admitted yourself, it's useless.
Powerset apparently can't do in detail specific topics that google covers well such as UL 790 and venture bros, you just see nothing. Let's go with "Crap, yet again".
Trexy has an interesting idea, but it needs refining. No valid/successful results, though.
Wikia crawls google and yahoo. Also needs java to run. remind me again why we HAVE to have java for search? Results were horribly inaccurate too.
Honestly guys, whatever drugs you are smoking when you write your ridiculously positive reviews please share them as I would like to have some of it too.
/opinions my own, not my companies, yadda
I ran Nexplore once. It was so fancy that I could do 5 google searches in the time it took to load one page of results. And this is without trying to customise anything.
Google is pretty boring, but it's fast, and in the end that matters most to me.
The clusty.com site doesn't work anymore? Quite odd or funny?
The clusty.com site doesn't work anymore? Quite odd or funny?
Works for me.
"clusty has some interesting things that google doesn't. However, it is not that accurate. I dont' know what searches you've done but I've done everything from generic to politically sensitive issues and found far more accurate results on google."
I've used this "clusty" when it was still vivisimo.com. I find the exact opposite. The searches are generally more relevant than anything google.com presents.
There is a good reason to try alternatives... In case you hadn't noticed, competition benefits the end-user... unless you juist want to be google sheep? That being said, yes google is the best and I enjoy using it but I will give it a rest on the very moment I discover something that is AT LEAST as good. They are raking in WAY to much money and they're spending habits are ATTROCIOUS. They need to have the user-base taken away to start appreciating it again. IMO.
PS, if you think ditch makes the title slanderous, you have problems...
IMO.PS, if you think ditch makes the title slanderous, you have problems...
+1 and yes lets just lets make sure Google has no competition at the same time!!
Bob
I gave up google 2-3 months after it hit the web simply because it is anti-1st, 2nd amendment, anti-American, & out to try and do what MSFT has been unable to do: control all net traffic/info. Plus it's fascist to the core & it plainly telegraphs that it is evil. It's got its claws in pretty good now. As for search: botbot, Copernic [since the web began darn near & on your desktop], Mamma, Highway 66, & Beaucoup to name just a few. Clusty doesn't seem too bad.
I gave up google 2-3 months after it hit the web simply because it is anti-1st, 2nd amendment, anti-American, & out to try and do what MSFT has been unable to do: control all net traffic/info. Plus it's fascist to the core & it plainly telegraphs that it is evil. It's got its claws in pretty good now. As for search: botbot, Copernic [since the web began darn near & on your desktop], Mamma, Highway 66, & Beaucoup to name just a few. Clusty doesn't seem too bad.
I really hope you are joking....
this is all i get for clusty.com:
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. The Web site might be experiencing technical difficulties, or you may need to adjust your browser settings.
Hell ya! More competition is better for the end-users. Clusty will keep those Google dudes stay competitive with a better search and perhaps pop the ridiculous stock price buble that Wall Street hyped up to draw in the suckers for quick cash.
www.yahoo.com use a real search engine.
"Clusty is perhaps Google http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google ’s most worthy competitor."
Can't say I agree as I have heard of plenty of search engines, but sadly, not this one.
Hey kami3k!, Kuni Lemmel isn't joking...all (his?) statements are true and backed up in fact. Google is a leftist/socialist enterprise...which is ironic since they use capitalism to try and further their restrictive socialist agenda...only in America!
wonder if you can 'google' the die-hard liberal owner's biases?
...I bet they're buds with "Ben&Jerry's"...lol