Navisso Search

Navisso Search. This is an interesting search engine that I discovered thanks to AltSearchEngines. Their main value (according to them) is the thing that I like the least, ironically enough. They say: "Navisso is an independent web search engine that (unlike many other popular search engines) does not rely on external search feeds. Our focus is to build a reliable, content-driven searchable index while reducing spam and other undesirable pages within our results... We are interested in building a true search engine by providing accurate, real, and relevant search results to our visitors. That said, we will never push any results to the top, unlike many other search engines."

This is supposed to ensure that 'official sites' don't get top billing, because they're not always the best. This is true, and I've certainly seen times when a fan site is better than the official one, particularly with films or books. However, one of the problems facing is the searcher is 'do they want the best resource or the most authoritative?' The truth is usually somewhere between the two, and I think this is where Navisso falls down. My martin luther king search didn't return any of the key sites that I expect to find, though the racist site was actuallly on the first page - clearly a case when an unofficial site, put together for devious means gets a better ranking than the good stuff.

So what DO I like about it? The functionality is good. Their 'OR' option is slightly strange, since it's {cat dog} but you can do a wildcard search based on * (librar* for library, libraries etc) and there's a nice unknown character ? and they also provide options for nested logic.

Still in its early stages yet, so the database isn't that large, but it's an engine I may well revisit at some point in the future to see how it's developing.