I’m surprised this didn’t get a bunch of blog posts when it came out on May 9: C|Net went out and did comprehensive reviews of nine top search engines.
This via Gary Stein, who says “the headline promised to help you find a search engine better than Google”, but Google winds up the winner anyways.
Search Engine Rating User rating Review points 
8.0 7.4 gets points for clearly delineated ads, loses for lackluster multimedia search (mentions Google not having search history, which it now does) 
7.7 8.0 Plusses include top-notch local search, negatives include poor smart answers 
6.7 8.8 Really likes the advanced features like columns and user history, but discouraged by close relationship with Alexa and lack of multimedia search 
6.3 n/a Good smart answers, Snapshot area, multimedia search, but no cache and limits for non-AOL members 
6.3 n/a Gets good marks for smart answers, MyJeeves and Binoculars previews, but loses on multimedia and local search 
6.0 n/a Usage of other MSN services and highlight viewer make it a contender, but lack of secondary searches like local, multimedia or people keep it from winning 
5.7 n/a good interface and multimedia search, back lack of local or cache and ads too easily mixed with search results 
5.3 n/a While the reviewer likes their people and forum search, the regular search is a complete anachronistic mess 
5.0 n/a Fans of periodical search and Furl, but not liking the lack of extra searches (including image, media, people, local)
They’ve also got a very interesting feature comparison chart.
Interesting how, while Google has more users, those who have chosen Yahoo or A9 as their primary search engine actually seem more satisfied than Google’s users. Meanwhile, most of the other engines don’t even have fans. Also, C|Net might want to do a better job feeding this kind of stuff to bloggers (I know plenty of guys who would have linked to it weeks ago).
Links:
CNet’s review
Nathan Weinberg writes the popular InsideGoogle blog, offering the latest news and insights about Google and search engines.
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