Google Named SquirrelNet.com's #1 Search Engine

February 24, 2005

A little over 18 months have passed since the last update to SquirrelNet.com's Top 20 Search Engines list. In this update, Google has moved up to the #1 spot for two reasons: (1) The indexing quantity and quality of Google have increased dramatically in the past 2 years; and (2) Our prior #1 search engine Overture.com was acquired by Yahoo, which was a good move for Yahoo, but Overture no longer exists in its prevous form.

Incidentally, Yahoo remains our #3 search engine. The site was leapfrogged by a unique upstart site called Answers.com, which presents a long list of information rather than a list of links to sites. We haven't fully tested the site yet, but at first glance the site looks promising.

But the changes do not stop there! A handful of sites left SquirrelNet's Top 20 Search Engine list as a result of becoming extinct, irrelevant or losing their identities. These include: DealTime, HotBot, Sprinks, Oingo and Go. This means there are new entrants to the list, something SquirrelNet.com will analyze in depth in the future. The entrants: Answers.com, Clusty.com (nice since it shows you categories related to your search as well as results), Kartoo.com (cool Shockwave interface but we haven't been impressed by their search results), MSN Search (recently upgraded since Microsoft realized they are years behind Google), and BlogDigger (hey, why not a weblog search engine!?).