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Is Google loosing market share?
People who are serious about searching for information on the Internet know that in order to get the best results, you must use more than one search engine. There is a ‘new kid on the block’ known as Exalead (pronounced eg’ zaeli: d). and in my opinion it is a worthy competitor to Google as far as the basic and advanced web search is concerned. You can find this search engine at www.exalead.com. 
Some believe that Exalead is Europe’s answer to America’s Google. The company was founded in Paris in 2000 by search engine pioneers Francois Bourdoncle and Patrice Bertin. They currently hold the positions of CEO and Chief Technology Officer respectively. The company have offices in the U.S. and Italy. Exalead was a part of a Euro project called ‘Quaero’. It is alleged that over £250M Euros have been pumped into this project to facilitate research and Exalead is said to have been one of the beneficiaries. The company have a wide range of products but our discussion will be limited only to the Web search engine.
When compared to Google, there is little that is new, however there are a number of things that Exalead does better and these are the things that I would like to highlight.
Filters
I normally judge a search engine by how easily I can use the commands to filter out unwanted data so that I can spend my time working only with what is relevant. Google was never known for having a good interface. The creators of Exalead have come up with a better, more user friendly interface. After running a basic search a little window pops up in the top right hand section of the screen that gives additional options to refine the search. Simply clicking on any of the options will refine the search using that parameter. The screen refreshes with the new results and the parameter chosen moves to the top of the ‘Refine Your Search’ window with the option to remove the refinement to the right. There are more refinement options and these can be accessed by clicking ‘more choices’ at the bottom of the ‘Refine you search’ window. The additional choices reveal more file types, geographical locations and a ‘Search within results’ box. Further refinement is possible by selecting ‘only recent results’ and you can also alternate between any of the three different views namely show text only, show images and text or show images text and extra information simply by clicking on the icons.
Preview Screen
Exalead is not the first search engine to use a preview screen; however the feature is a useful one. When you do a search the default view for the results includes a small thumbnail image of the web page for each result. If you click on the thumbnail image you are taken to a preview of the web page. Here you have the option to go ‘full page’ or return to the results. On this preview screen all occurrences of the search words are highlighted so that you can find them easily. Sometimes it is not necessary to go to the preview screen as by looking at the thumbnail image you can tell whether it is the right page or not. Google currently does not have a preview screen.
Shortcuts
This feature has nothing to do with a web search engine but it is convenient. You can save shortcuts of at least 18 web pages to Exalead. To do this you have to create an account and be logged in. These shortcuts can be retrieved from any computer connected to the Internet. However, before using this feature, you should read their privacy policies just to make sure that you agree with them. Once cookies are enabled you are leaving yourself open to some form of tracking.
Email
This feature has nothing to do with a web search engine, but again it is useful. You can email the search results to someone else or to yourself.
Add Exalead to Your Website
You can add Exalead to your Website. This is a very simple process and it works exceptionally well.
Exalead is currently indexing approximately 8 billion pages, a milestone that Google has reached sometime ago. Google also offers translation services, scholarly searches, alternatives to Microsoft Office and a host of other services so it will not be easy to unseat them from their dominant position in the market. However, I am convinced that Exalead is a worthy competitor to Google when it comes to the basic and advance searches. For the present time I have made Exalead my Home Page but Google is still in my favourites as Google is much more than a ‘Search Engine’. On another occasion we can discuss the advance search features but I think we have raised enough points for you to give Exalead a try. What do you think?
It is expected that Google will loose some market share especially in Europe, but they will continue to lead for a long time to come.