This Monday morning Jim Britt and I on our WSVA Podcast (ghtech.site/wsva_pods) discussed Search Engines, how to use them, and some of the differences.
First, go to reliablesoft.net. (Use this link ‘ghtech.site/se_useage’ to see the details – beware another page will pop up right away. Click in the white space to shut it down).
They list the top 10, of course, and then some other interesting search engines below the post above may be of interest, too. You should check out that link.
The top three listed are Google.com (no surprise here averages show about 83% of the world market), Bing.com (owned by Microsoft about 21%), and Yahoo.com (about 2.25%) and then down at number six one of my favorites is DuckDuckGo.com (0.42%).
Number four and five are from China and Russia, respectively, not too surprising with the number of people they serve.
They are all very good at what they do but to tell the truth, Google is rated higher than all the others for accuracy and number of references in most cases. When I read that information, I figured I would test it out. I searched for “Gray Haired Tech” (my new site I created just a couple of weeks ago, you are here already.)
Google showed my site as the #2 link on the first page 😊 and my logo showed up as the first image (😘 again). While Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo showed…nothing, not even as far as the second page. So thanks for your accuracy and for finding me, Google!
Here are some tricks you do to get better search results with Google.
Use Quotes: If you search for ‘Ron Doyle site’ you will get results with any of those three words in it, in any order. If you use quotes and search “Ron Doyle site” you will find that exact term with some others at the bottom. Try it out and see; although, surprisingly you will still get a lot about me either way.
Use a Hyphen: Using a hyphen with Google is like using a minus sign in math. If you search ‘banana -fruit’ it will return results talking about a particular clothing manufacturer but not much about the fruit.
Use the word Site: If you create a search like this, “Chrome Browser site:grayhaired.tech” it will first search just my site for the words Chrome browser. Others will then come after. You may search for any site like this. You do not need quotes.
Here are some Google shortcuts. To get a word’s definition type, “define: theword.” You will get a definition with audio pronunciation. Some others are; “Weather zip code”, “Time zip code”, “Translate Coin to Celtic” or phrases like, “translate where is the bathroom to Spanish.” There are more available also. One last one. Do you want to know how a specific stock is doing? All you do is type its ticker symbol, “msft”, “goog”, “svndf” or “aapl.” You do not have to use quotes for any of these (also I do not own any of these).
One last search tip of the day. If you use the Google Browser which I highly recommend you do not have to go to google to search, just type your search in the Omni Box at the top where you type a web address. The search will be performed from there.
What search do you prefer? Most have pros, Google: accuracy, Bing: pretty, Yahoo: not so sure, and DuckDuckGo: privacy.
