Tracking Potential Google Killers

Read/WriteWeb continues to monitor the second tier of search engines. Last month, they published the top 100 alternative search engines. This month, they’ve updated the list for February, with 32 new additions.

The criteria to make the list:

1) The Search Engine should exhibit superiority to Google—not as a whole, but in just one particular area. . . . We are not arguing that any one of the 100 list members is a “Google killer”. Rather, that they should be matched against the appropriate corresponding part of Google. For example, TheFind is a shopping search engine and therefore should be compared to Google’s shopping search engine, Froogle. . . .

2) Secondly, what ultimately gets a particular search engine into the Top 100 (as opposed to the hundreds and hundreds of “also rans”) is my evaluation. It is a subjective, personal judgment from an SEO—not an independent, statistical measure.

At least he’s honest. He, by the way, is Charles S. Knight, SEO. (Is that like PhD or Esq.? I’m totally adding it to my monogram.)

He admits the original list might have been a bit lax in its definition of “search engine,” including del.icio.us, Digg, and Rollyo. These have been dropped this month. He’ll also be featuring a search engine of the month, extolling the virtues of one of the top 100.

See anything you like on the list?