search

After years of being a faithful, exclusive Google searcher, I’ve recently become inundated and overwhelmed by my search engine options.

First up we’ve got Swagbucks:

Swagbucks actually sucks as a search engine and unless you know exactly what page you want to reach (like your search terms are the name of the site), you aren’t going to find anything useful.

The awesome thing about Swagbucks is that on some searches you earn points that can be redeemed for prizes like Amazon gift cards (I’ve gotten $15 in gift cards in a little under 3 months of use).

Because I absolutely love ordering stuff from Amazon.com, I’ve got Swagbucks set as my default browser in Firefox so it always gets used first. If and when it doesn’t find me anything useful (I get the points whether or not I find the results useful), I move on to my next options.

Then there’s Bing:

Bing is Microsoft’s latest effort to be competitive in the search engine market. Bing boasts features like being able to track packages and get local traffic info on the search engine results page rather than just telling you what site you can find that information on.

Not to mention new features from Google:

I was starting to feel like it might be worth swaying from my loyalty to Google but then they went and added some handy new features too. There’s now a “Show options…” link in the blue bar right below the search box on the results page. When you click that you get a slew of new options that let you do things like narrow down your search results by date posted or navigate possibly related searches with the Wonder Wheel.

Take the taste test:

So after getting my Swagbucks should I use Bing or Google? Or should I use Yahoo, which has still never appealed to me despite the fact that they’re based in my home town?

It’s time to try out Blind Search, the search engine taste test. A few days of using Blind Search reveals that my search engine of choice should be Google. I do question if maybe the results are skewed in favor of Google since it is my normal search engine of choice and I know how to tailor my keywords to get the results I want.

What search engine do you use? Are you going to try out Swagbucks or the Blind Search taste test?

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