Last week, I wrote that there are an increasing number of people claiming that the major search engines are getting long in the tooth. The key issue: they have been thoroughly compromised by commercial forces (some ethical, many not) that have compromised search results by forcing marginal or inappropriate sites into the coveted top positions, frustrating searchers with false starts and wasted time.
I noted as far back as 2005 that even the advertising in search engines had been similarly compromised. Some retailers and e-commerce sites were so crazed for traffic they would advertise products they didn't sell or products that didn't even exist.
The net results was that we moved from a situation not too long ago where the search engines only indexed 50% of the web, to a situation where it can be said they now index 150% of the web, the extra 50% being the junk, clutter, scammers and garbage that work to obscure meaningful search results.
A lot of companies have sought to address this growing problem with their own search engines. I wrote, for example, about a new search engine called Blekko, that allows users to powerfully filter search results, or even to use filters built by others. Conceptually, it's a clever idea, but on a practical level, it's a lot of work, and if you rely on the work of others, you never know what you're getting (or missing).
Now there is a lot of buzz around a new search engine called duckduckgo.com, a quirky (quacky?) search engine that tries to improve search by doing less, not more. Its unique selling proposition is that it aggressively filters out garbage search results, and won't track or retain your search results in any way. Does a site like this even have a prayer?
I gave duckduckgo a workout this morning. My first reaction: it's surprisingly good. It's design is so spare you get this unsettling feeling you're missing something, but what really seems to be missing is a lot of the garbage we're become accustomed to in search results. It's rather like the first time you put on your glasses with your new prescription. Things jump out at you that you might not have seen before. It takes only a few searches to become convinced you're probably not missing anything important in the search results it returns. It's worth a look.
What may be happening, finally, is that we are beginning a long-term shift back to basics in search, a shift that recognizes that search engines can't and shouldn't do everything, and that search engines are best when they stay true to their purpose: to index original content, not try to become content. A shift like this can only be good news for those of us who own original content.