The Fragmentation of Search

I don't agree with Jeff Jarvis and Glenn Reynolds.  Google isn't near peaking.  They continue to innovate and push ahead on many fronts. It is certainly a different kind of company and many of their services aren't nearly as good as they could or should be, but I think Google is doing as many (or more) interesting things as any company in the world right now.

But in their core business, search, I find myself behaving differently these days. I used to always search via Google using the Firefox search field. Then I switched to Yahoo! Now I search on both and a bunch of other services as well.

Here is my Firefox dropdown list. After I type in a search term, I generally drop down to find the best service for that search.

I wish there was a way to track which search services I use the most, but here is my best guess:

1 - Google - 25%
2 - Yahoo - 20%
3 - Wikipedia - 20%
4 - Delicious - 15%
5 - Flickr - 10%
6 - Answers - 5%
7 - Others - 5%

I realize that I am far from normal in my use of search. I've seen the stats that say www.yahoo.com is one of the most common search terms in Google.

But I do think that as Firefox and hopefully IE7 offer more opportunity to customize the search field, people will do just that and start choosing the appropriate web service to search before hitting the enter key.

Comments

[Erik Schwartz]

Google's strength is monetizing search, at that they've been masters.

The actual searches are good (but a little too easily manipulated by the nefarious)

Their mail is good, but no better than Y! Mail beta. The QOS of Gmail is still very beta. They had a 5 hour outage about a week ago. These are not uncommon.

Maps is good, and the integration with the satellite imagery is great, but driving directions are mediocre.

Calendar seems OK but I haven't really beat it up yet.

All their other services are 2nd tier. Froogle, Google Finance, Google Video, Google News, Blogger, Toolbar, Picasa, that whole slew of desktop apps...

They've got a ton of cash and a great brand, but I haven't seen a lot of real product innovation recently.

[Paul]

If you were looking for a new job, you'd also want to add the Indeed Job Search plugin for Firefox, available here:
http://www.indeed.com/tools/jobseeker/

Paul

[Derek Scruggs]

Install CustomizeGoogle (http://www.customizegoogle.com/) and you can have links to all the major search engines show up at the top of your Google results. That way you can search Google, then see what Yahoo, Ask, Teoma etc return on the same search in one click.

[David G]

The threat to search's dominance isn't competition; it is that the read/write web is (becoming) a more efficient way to get quality answers to every-day questions than what search is.

It would also be interesting to get your gut feel % on how often you now "find" stuff through the communtiy around on this blog and from reading other bloggers. I've noticed you regularly reach out on your blog for info that you would have searched for a few years back.

For more on this meme, read this essay I put up last year: http://tinyurl.com/k9wr6

[shawn mccollum]

CustomizeGoogle looks really cool. The ad removal feature probably makes marketing folks cringe. I've been working on a mobile website that provides a similar style searching as the firefox search box. It's simply just a drop down, a text box and a submit button. The power is that the drop down acts as a guide to help the user choose the best place to find what their looking for. I'm a little biased but I feel what you've said here is doubly important when searching from a mobile browser. The site is http://wampad.com.

[Josh]

The Root Vault lets you track which search engines (or sites) you visit/use most.

[Steve]

Good one Fred. I wrote a similar post a while back that I'll link to rather than restating comments. My view is that the ease of the searchbar can start to chip away at Google's dominance as vertical searches start to be better for certain domains.

[Christian]

I am on the same page where I used to be 100% google but have now switched exclusively to yhoo. Is it me or has Yhoo really gotten better in the last couple months?

[Ranjit Mathoda]

I find myself using ask.com a bunch now. And rollyo for Citysearch searches.

[Drew]

Where do vertical or contextual search engines fit into your search engine usage? Seems to me that the search environment is fragmenting as better tools are developed for specific types of searches. The clean single search box now common among across generic search engine doesn't do a great job of interpreting more nuanced requests. For example, compare the results for a travel search found on Google/Ask/Yahoo to the same search on Kayak/SideStep/Farechase. Or a job search on indeed/simplyhired.

[Derek]

You should check out the Wikipedia search on futef.com. It has a firefox search plugin and it allows for narrowing search results by category.

[Nora]

I was wondering if anyone can help me out. I use Firefox and love it. Lately a feature in Google (my default homepage) stopped working and I don't know where to get it back... Whenever I typed anything in the Google box Google guesses and suggests searches with the number of search results for each guess on the same line at the far right. Say I want to type "beyond". Once I type "be" Google lists (in a sort of dropdown menu) "bee" with the number of search results for that in a light green color next to it, and on the next line there's say "beethoven", and so forth. Once I get to say "beyon", Google goes on to suggest "beyonce", then on the line below it "beyonce bio", then "beyonce pics", and so forth. All of a sudden this feature disappeared... I suspect the DSL speed may have something to do with it because it always took longer when the Net was slow, but now even when it's fast the option doesn't show up. I really really want this option... I would really appreciate your help on this. Thanks a million!