Easy Search Live

I've been taking a look at a new (to me at any rate) search engine called Easy Search Live which was pointed out to me the other day. It styles itself 'Next generation search' which is a bit of a grand claim and I wish companies wouldn't do that because it puts my back up right at the outset. However, let's ignore that. It's an engine with tabs for Web, images, audio, video, news, sport, blogs, forums, kids, open directory, wikipedia and city-centers.

No help screens. No advanced search. The home page is quite long, filled up with adverts and a plug for one of their own features. I'm not sure where they're pulling their results from, or if they're getting them thru their own crawling. I tried a search for me, only to get 'no results found' and \\\\\\ in the search box. A search without my name in double quotes worked more effectively but I was put off by the adverts at the top and down the side of the screen, the empty search box, well, empty that is except for the odd \\\\\\ again. Display included a thumbnail on the left hand side, an email link and 'Live View' which pulls up a small screen sized version of the site. All well and good, but it takes as long to load as the page itself, so I'm not so convinced as to the value of this feature. I'm told that it acts as a mini browser (yes but I have tabs for that) and I can open up multiple versions (and I can use tabs for that as well.)

The image function was accurate, but the display of a couple of images per line wasn't great. Sport didn't update me on the latest sports information, and the news function was reasonable. The blogs search option didn't really offer me much - a search on 'Chrome' which has to be the biggest story of the day didn't return anything except a page of eBay blogs about chrome things. The 'search by country' option limited to search by .uk rather than address, so that wasn't very helpful either.

I'm really sorry, and I hate to be negative about search engines, but I really can't find anything at all to rave about with this one, and the only really interesting feature is the Live view - no cached pages, but that's not really enough to keep me enthused. I'd suggest passing on this one.

Comments

[Cathy Romine]

Why is it you dont approve comments - You like throwing out the criticism and not give people the opportunity to expand your knowledge and prove you wrong. You have to be a wee bit more educated than how you've appeared in this post to know that "Easy Search Live" IS "The Next Generation Of Search Engines" and we are getting the reviews to back up what we claim.

Your use to playing with the toys - now learn to play with what a real search engine should be.

I will post yours and mine on my blog at word press and type pad - I'm not afraid to show both sides are you?

Cathy Romine
ESL Management Team

[Phil Bradley]

I have no idea why you would assume that I don't approve comments. The only comments that I don't approve are those which are spam. I'm happy for you to point out ways in which YOU think your search engine is 'next generation'.

[Dave Gilbert]

Hi Phil you ask why we call Easy search Live the next generation of search so here goes.
As pointed out our engine produces more results than Google or yahoo but it is the way it produces those results that take it to the next level because unlike both google and yahoo who use large clusters of of servers to deliver their results we only use 1, secondly our results as noted are not cached we don't maintain a large index of listings requiring pterrabytes of space or gigawatts of power to maintain a reasonable level of results for our users, instead our engine actively collects and collates web data on the fly transforming this into a set of results relevent to the supplied query.
No it does not rank sites in the same way as google but simply reads the site content and scores it and places it into the results based on its score.
The fact that it can out perform probably what is regarded as THE Major search engine by millions of results should indicate that it is different and uses a totally different method of processing information.
We also have the ability of rapidly deploying a site specific spider as in the case of our Venture partners City-Centers.com (Americas Directory) or a TLD specific spider as in the case of the local search which we hope to further reduce to region specific.
While our site to you contains too much information on the main page most of it is relevent to using our engine and not being designers we placed it the best way we knew how.
To date though we have had few complaints about the layout but plenty of compliments about the engine in fact Killer startups even reviewed and compared us with Yahoo and Altavista (http://www.killerstartups.com/Search/easysearchlive-com-new-search-engine).
I should also mention that our engine is not even a year old as yet and we still have other improvements planned for the future.
such as our dev engine planned for use in schools http://www.skippysearch.com/
this engine uses a variation of "Live View" called "Overlook"

Dave

[Gerald English]

Hello Phil,

I would to ask that you take the time to meet the people at Easysearchlive before you attack. These are good moral folk that simply want to make it better for people on the Net and earn a living.

You are very qualified to do what you do. I can see that, but knowledge does not trump kindness, relationship building, and simply being courteous.

Tearing down does not build you up. The way to build yourself is to treat others like you want to be treated.

Please I ask, get to know these fine people.

God bless,

Gerald English

[Phil Bradley]

Gerald - what I'm interested in is looking at search engines, how well they perform and how useful they are. How nice or otherwise the people behind a search engine are it doesn't affect the fact that the engine itself *doesn't perform*. They can be great individuals, but if I can't find the information I need, that's not exactly helping me.

I'm interested in your comments about courtesy. Let's just review that for a moment shall we? Mr Gilbert accused me of having my head out of Google's butt. In her weblog Ms Romine accused me of being ignorant and knowing nothing about search engines. I'm also accused of not allowing comments, when this was simply down to Ms Romine not understanding how moderating comments worked. I've also noticed that she's not apologised either.

How is that me attacking anyone? How is that me tearing anyone down? If your colleagues, and let's be honest, that's what they are, agree with your position of 'treat others how you want to me treated' they may wish to consider that.

And to make that point clear - how about a little honesty from you Gerald? You're an ESL manager, so you're not exactly unbiased are you?

I'd like to thank both Mr Gilbert and Ms Romine however since their comments encouraged me to review the search engine. Having done so I'm amused to see that it's even worse than I originally thought. I'm currently preparing a new review that will go into more detail.

[Gerald English]

Hello Phil,

You are correct. I am biased to Easysearchlive and a manager, and I like the people that run it.
The reason is that ESL gives me the means to get the message of the Gospel out to the world through the Internet. I owe ESL a great deal. There have been lives changed through this ministry.
Mr. Dave Gilbert has worked long and hard to get ESL up and running and his reaction was normal. His choice of words was wrong but I know his heart.

I do not know you, Phil, and I do not want to judge you. But it does seem that you are biased too. Get to know these people and you will like them too.

It seems to me that you could compare us objectively to the other search engines and leave the subjective comments out.

Hope you have an ESL day and God bless,

Gerald English

[Dave Gilbert]

perhaps Mr Bradley if you had sent your concerns to us instead of publically ridiculling our work we could concentrate on fixing the problems instead of having to worry about what your next rant is likely to bring.
yes we failed to disable the kids search but that was an oversight as we imagined we would be able to correct the problems quickly and with minimum disturbance however this proved to be incorrect.
a simple email to us (and you have our email address as you have responded before).
subsequently we have removed the kid search tab and won't replace it until the problem has been rectified.
As for no sports results for the 2008 olympics please check again because i did and got Showing 1 - 10 of around 22,100 results for 2008 olympics not as many as google but not as you claim no results.
search by date again did you try because i get Showing 1 - 10 of around 2,740,000,000 results for 21/03/2008.
as for googles chrome agreed we don't return many results using the blog search as yet.
No we don't have an advanced search facility as yet nor all the extras that google offer but then as previously stated we are less than a year old and are still constantly developing added functionality.
the bottom line is Mr Bradley you don't like Easy Search Live But there are plenty of people who do support our work and our engine you have said your piece publically and bordered on slandering us, you claim to be professional but act like a commoner by continueing your attacks in a very public way. (A true professional would have approached us in private and voiced their concerns).
you claim to be an intellectual but act like a child by taking your vitriol public.
Mr Bradley if you have nothing better to do with your time than try to throw your weight around and bully us from the net by posting material meant to shame us i would suggest that you first think about your writings set them aside then think again because we will only stand so much before we launch legal action to have you and your posts removed from the facilities you utilise.
Regardless of what you think write or do we will continue, your efforts only serve to strengthen us.
Also For your information we have instructed our lawyers to monitor your writings etc both on and offline and should they find legal cause, to proceed and instigate legal action against you for damages etc suffered by your actions.
should you wish to point out further failings i strongly suggest you act like a gentleman and revert to emailing us to voice your concerns so we can discuss them in amore civilised manner.

[Phil Bradley]

I shall watch developments to your search engine with interest. However, you may rest assured that I won't be covering them, and on the basis of the above, I'd be surprised if many others will either.

Good luck in your future endeavors.