Alexa's Search Engine is powered by... Alexa

[duncan12]

Alexa doesn't get mentioned much as a search engine... in fact it is never mentioned. I think this is mostly because people think of Alexa as the ranking company. But, quietly, over the last few years, Alexa has removed all traces of 3rd party results (Google, then MSN) and has replaced them with results from their own search index.

Now, when you go to Alexa and type a search into the search box you are getting results directly from Alexa's engine. And, here's the kicker - it is powered by people. The Alexa crawler and indexer are influenced by toolbar usage. That means you'll be getting results that are based on how people use the web.

Give it a shot. The results are pretty good and getting better. Who knows, maybe some day, when somebody writes a list of popular search engines Alexa will actually get a mention.

[FWIW, I work at Alexa.]

[Mel66]

Originally Posted by duncan12

And, here's the kicker - it is powered by people. The Alexa crawler and indexer are influenced by toolbar usage. That means you'll be getting results that are based on how people use the web.

Um, well, you'll get results based on users who have installed the Alexa tool bar. Not exactly a representative sample of web users. I can say from personal experience that it is very easy to game Alexa. It is interesting information, but IMHO should not be used to make business decisions.

Melissa