Your opinion wanted...

[Golgotha]

This weekend I will be making some changes to the Search Engine Decoder (http://www.search-this.com/search_engine_decoder.asp). Need to reflect the fact that Hotbot now pulls results from Ask rather than Ink. Ask has been making mini-moves as of late - they now have results in Lycos and Hotbot, plus I saw an Ask TV commercial the other day, first time in years.

But, all that is besides the point - here's where I want your opinion, I will be removing Fast from the Decoder and replacing it with something else. What do you think that something else should be?

My thoughts are either 'Clusty', which I have been using lately and really like or 'Gigablast', which is the 'Bucknell' of the search engine world.

Perhaps Clusty should not be allowed because they are a meta-search engine and I should just include WiseNut?

or maybe something else altogether?

your thoughts?

[I, Brian]

Hi Mark, and nice to see you posting around here. :)

Did you ever revisit Sitepoint again, btw??

As for the decoder - the more engines you list on it, the more useful people will perceive it. There are certainly a lot of new boys on the block, but most are probably not worth covering properly until they've proved their market worth.

It may be a good idea to provide a little more information on some meta search engines - this is a still an area that offers promise, plus there's the sense of completion in covering some of the main players in this area.

Anyway, it'll be great to see the results. :)

[Golgotha]

sup Brian, yeah I still visit SitePoint from time-to-time. 2005 has just been crazy-busy already, I got a lot of different things on my plate...

I don't have time to hit any of the forums that much lately, should start to settle down by August, I hope.

so what's you vote then?

[Qal]

That sure looks beautiful, Golgotha.

As Brian said, you should do something like that for meta search engines. Not many old metasearches are that good now. Mamma has'nt updated a thing since last couple of months, moreover, they've dropped yahoo now and use MSN & Teoma primarily.

Newer metasearch engines (Ixquick, Jux2 etc..) seem more promising. You might want to include them.