Twing-alicious searching

25 May, 2008  8 Comments

In the search world, competition is fierce. Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo pour millions of dollars into advertising their search engines to gain every last user on the internet. There is a new player in the business now thought, and it looks like Twing is going to hit the ball out of the park.

Twing is an “alternative search engine” that I found while perusing the farthest corners of the internet (yes, the internet is square). By alternative, Twing is just “not one of the big 5″. That’s catchy. But the important question to ask any new search engine is, “Does your search work?”

I was pretty skeptical about Twing when I first arrived at their homepage. Supposedly, it searches forums and forum posts, rather than searching plain old static pages. Interesting, haven’t ever seen that before. This is what Twing has to say about itself:

We’re dedicated to the world of online communities and forums. Our intent is to enable you to quickly find highly relevant communities and discussions pertaining to your interests, as well as keep you informed on the latest trends influencing communities. Members of Twing also can track activity on their favorite forums and stay informed on updates via custom alerts.

Again, you can promise the world, but can you deliver?  Let’s see what Twing can find for me…

Me: Simpsons Bartender
Twing: 255 results, first one included ‘Moe’
Not bad….

Me: 1980 Olympics
Twing: 2100 results, second one was about the USA hockey team - exactly what I was looking for
Very nice

Me: Tetris creator
Twing: 312 results, first one including Alexey Pajitnov.
I am extremely impressed

Overall, Twing did a great job handling search requests and providing an easy way to find information without following deep link trees.  The user interface is also very nice and easy to use.  Twing is definitely going to make an impact in the search engine world, watch out Google.

Tag this at Technorati: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Event Horizon: Google Page Rank Update

25 May, 2008  5 Comments

Thats right folks, Google is going to update their page rank within the next 12 days. That would bring the time lapse between two PR updates to 100 days, leading to the belief that it is time to update the PRs. Below are the last 10 PR updates by date and days between.

Date Updated Update Type Days Lapsed
4/26/2006 TBPR Export 45
7/13/2006 TBPR & BL Export 100
9/28/2006 TBPR & BL Export 76
1/10/2007 TBPR & BL Export 101
1/25/2007 TBPR & BL Export 18
4/30/2007 TBPR & BL Export 98
10/28/2007 TBPR & BL Export 181
1/10/2008 TBPR & BL Export 74
2/26/2008 TBPR & BL Export 47
6/06/2008 TBPR & BL Export 100

Many people have been spreading the rumor that the PR update happened on April 30th. I personally checked the blogs of those claiming that their blog PR was updated, and none had been (most were still at N/A).

“Many of you has already noticed their new PR, and the rest will be noticing it in the next moments or days, so keep checking your Google Toolbar or use any of the Backlinks and Page Rank Checkers. for me and my 3 months site I have noticed my first new PR at the first moments of this day - the first of May (the labor day! and the month that holds my birthdate (May 7th) in its days! what a coincidence lol) - I was so excited for this Update as it’s my first update to know how good did I work and how much do I understand Google PR and the Search Engine Optimization concepts, so what was the result??”

The PR update has not yet happened, but it is coming in the near future. Get your final links in now before the update, the next one won’t be for another 100 days or so.

Tag this at Technorati: , , , , , , ,