4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards

Outstanding Search Service
Winner: Google
Second Place: AllTheWeb & Yahoo
Honorable Mention: Ask Jeeves

Best Meta Search Engine
Winner: Dogpile
Second Place: Vivisimo
Honorable Mention: Mamma

Best News Search Engine
Winner: Google News
Second Place: Yahoo News
Honorable Mention: AltaVista News & Daypop

Best Image Search Engine
Winner: Google Images
Second Place: AltaVista Images

Best Shopping Search Engine
Winner: Yahoo Shopping
Second Place: Froogle & Shopping.com
Honorable Mention: Kelkoo, BizRate & mySimon

Best Design
Winner: Google
Second Place: Yahoo & AllTheWeb

Most Webmaster Friendly Search Provider
Winner: Google
Second Place: Yahoo
Honorable Mention: Inktomi & AllTheWeb

Best Paid Placement Service
Winners: Google AdWords
Second Place: Overture
Honorable Mention: FindWhat, Espotting & Mirago

Best Search Toolbar
Winners: Google & Groowe
Second Place: Alexa
Honorable Mention: Copernic Agent

Best Search Feature
Winner: Google Definitions & AllTheWeb URL Investigator
Second Place: Google Calculator & AllTheWeb Calculator
Honorable Mention: Google Web API & Ask Jeeves Dictionary Search

Best Specialty Search Engine
Honorable Mention: Internet Archive, Scirus & Google Groups

How The Winners Were Selected

In early January 2004, Search Engine Watch members were invited to nominate search engines in various categories for the 4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards. They could choose from a list of search engines that Search Engine Watch editors thought were good for within a particular category or suggest new services.

In late January 2004, anyone subscribed to one of Search Engine Watch's newsletters was sent a special email allowing them to vote in the final round. Each person was only able to vote once using a unique voting URL.

Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan and associate editor Chris Sherman made the final decisions about award winners. Our selections were influenced by reader votes, though the final decisions over winners isn't always the same as the voting. More details about how decisions were made are described in each category below.

Please note that in most categories, people were allowed to name both a winner and a second place choice. In the summary below, we'll often refer to how the voting went for the "winner" of a category versus the "second place" vote.

Yes, we know, it makes things confusing. However, we have found that by letting people make two choices, it is easier to see the strength of some second-tier services that might otherwise get drowned out.

Outstanding Search Service

This category recognizes outstanding performance in helping internet users locate general information from across the World Wide Web.

Winner: Google

Instead, our sense of Google being not as good as in the past comes from our own personal experiences and anecdotes from others we talk with or hear from. Seemingly unthinkable in the past, we occasionally find Google doesn't find what we are looking for today. And more often than in the past, we may try a Google alternative to locate information.

Onward to the positive -- and an incredible positive it is. Google remains the top choice for anyone who wishes to start their web search quest. Much more often than not, it continues to help you locate what you are looking for. The service has maintained the consistency of its search interface, a relief when competitors seem to be constantly redesigning. It has also maintained a generally high quality of results, making it still the touchstone to which its competitors aspire.

In the popular voting, Google won 70 percent of the 834 votes cast for a winner in this category, far outdistancing any others. This is despite much outcry at the end of last year by some marketers who lost free listings on Google due to a major algorithm change and claims that this change reduced Google's relevancy.

We received 50 comments in association with Google votes. Here's a sampling:

• You can't beat the speed and relevance of Google.
• Still the best, but recent Google updates have put businesses in peril. This may sway users to choose another engine over time. Results are also not as accurate as before.
• I teach Language Arts in a high school of 850 students grades 9 - 12. Every student in the school has to do a research paper every year...no exceptions. Not only is Google the [search engine] with the best results, but I love the advance search option...stops plagiarism in its tracks.
• I used to LOVE Google and overall, they are the best. HOWEVER - I am not impressed with my results since they had to remove that algorithm due to the patent issue. I cannot stand that when I'm searching for products, none show up except ads.
• I only use Google anymore, because the results are better and more applicable, without so much fluff!
• I have had only one choice for two years. Even with the Florida update stupidity, nobody compares or even comes close in relevance, reach, usability, honesty (sponsor ads not mixed in results, clearly labeled).
• I have two pages which are the best and the most important in their respective niches, and Google alone consistently places them top for the relevant search terms.
• I have been using Google since it was in beta test and it continues to amaze me with its accuracy, features, clean look, and overall usefulness. I have been a university reference librarian for over 30 years and NOTHING works better in the area of electronic resources than Google. Sergey and Larry deserve the Nobel Prize in something for doing so much for humanity.
• I am not sure any of them deserve the moniker "Outstanding," but Google seems to be the better.
• Google's still my number one, but its response time seems to have increased this past year. If I think it's getting too sluggish, I'll start using AllTheWeb more, and Teoma's an up-and-comer.
• Google just does it again. K.I.S.S. Keeps it simple, stupid, plus always looking for new ways, new features. I love that about them. They never lose touch with their customers.
• Google is getting overrun with people optimizing, so results aren't as good lately.
• Google - No portal rubbish; straight to search. AdWords can sometimes provide exactly the right results but are kept clearly separate.
• Despite some worries, Google continues its dominance as best search engine.
• Google still indexes new pages faster than any other search engine.
• Began the year great, but lost relevancy 2nd half.
• Despite complaints from high pressure marketers, Google's improvements are much needed by those who are honest and don't try their fancy tricks to get their SPAM listed.

We agree with our readers -- for the fourth year in a row, Google deserves to be named winner as Outstanding Search Service.

Second Place: AllTheWeb & Yahoo

In the popular voting for winner in this category, it was an exact tie between AllTheWeb and Yahoo. Both earned 6 percent of the 834 votes for a winner, putting them second after Google.

We also asked people to vote directly for a second place winner. Here, it was a tie again, with both AllTheWeb and Yahoo gaining 21 percent of the 664 "second place" votes, well head of the closest competitor, Google with 15 percent.

Again, we agree with our readers. Both services deserve the second place award.

AllTheWeb provides very relevant, fresh and comprehensive results. New features added in early 2003, such the URL Investigator (see Best Search Feature, below), a clean redesign and an enhanced advanced search page are all appreciated. We continue to love customization and skinning options.

Why not make AllTheWeb a winner alongside Google, as we considered last year? The service's future is in doubt. Bought by Overture last year, AllTheWeb then later gained Yahoo as an owner, after Yahoo bought Overture. Now being the least known among Yahoo three public search sites (AltaVista and Yahoo itself are the others), we fear AllTheWeb may be abandoned going forward.

We haven't seen much new development work since the Overture purchase other than an index expansion. Web search does remain great, but Google is advancing in new areas, developing its shopping search engine and starting in on local search. So while we love AllTheWeb and recommend it to readers as a great second choice -- or indeed, even a great first choice search engine -- it may not grow further or even be around in the long-term.

There were eight comments received with votes for AllTheWeb, most of which indicated use of AllTheWeb because of dissatisfaction with Google. A sampling:

• Google is getting too pushy with AdWords and placing unwanted ads all over the internet. I don't trust them anymore and I still have to drill down through all their picks to find relevant information.
• Google have failed dismally in the last 3 months, prior to which they were the runaway winner. Not now though!
• Google has lost the edge this year.
• AllTheWeb does a solid job with less spam than Google. Nice layout / skin features. AllTheWeb brings the fairest results and the less influence as Google does.

Yahoo has made huge strides over the past year. The company has rediscovered search as an important feature for its users and hopes to bring them back through its "The New Yahoo Search" campaign.

At its core, however, Yahoo remains Google. Despite purchasing Inktomi over a year ago, it is repackaged Google results that most users will get, when doing a search. That makes Yahoo very relevant but not necessarily unique for web searching.

Inktomi results, which also have a good reputation for relevancy, should be appearing on Yahoo by the end of March. They'll shore up the work that we've found most impressive, Yahoo's featuring of a variety of specialized searches. Yellow Page results, image results, shopping search results, news listings and Yahoo's human compiled web site reviews are all made easily accessible via tabs, in addition to web searching.

We also like the invisible tabs work that Yahoo is experimenting with, to bring to light some of these other search options that searches may miss due to tab blindness. Search Shortcuts, as Yahoo calls them, bring easy access to maps, weather, news and other information. Overture Labs, launched last year and just rebranded as Yahoo Labs, is also a sign of Yahoo looking to advance search technology over the long haul, in the way that Google Labs has been experimenting publicly with search technology since 2002.

Below is a sampling of the five comments received from voters who favored Yahoo:

• Yahoo results are much better today than Google
• Surrounds Google's results with terrific value added features
• Google is full of SPAM (search for anything related to home improvement and you'll know what I mean)! At least when I use Yahoo! I get a layer of "directory"-style results.

Honorable Mention: Ask Jeeves

Only 1 percent of the winner vote went to Ask Jeeves, putting it well behind services such as MSN, AltaVista and even Ask Jeeves-owned Teoma, all of which gained 3 percent of the vote. But it's Ask Jeeves we singled out for an honorable mention, because of changes to the service over the past year.

In particular, Ask Jeeves is doing innovative things with invisible tabs and with what it calls Smart Search. We think the future of search will be this much smarter approach to delivering up more than just web pages. Ask Jeeves has made a promising start toward this future that deserves attention.

Teoma, while not given an honorable mention, deserves a try by anyone who feels more "advanced" with search or wants an alternative to Google's core web search results. The quality of Teoma's web results and its comprehensiveness has continued to grow.

Best Meta Search Engine

This category recognizes outstanding performance in helping internet users meta search or gather results from many web search engines by using one single service. For examples, see the Metacrawlers area within Search Engine Watch.

Winner: Dogpile

Dogpile takes top honors this year, both in the popular vote and with Search Engine Watch's editors. It garnered 27 percent of the 570 votes cast for best meta search engine.

While Dogpile has always been a popular choice among readers, it's only in the past year that the service has addressed some major shortcomings that Search Engine Watch had previously criticized. What's more, Dogpile streamlined its interface and added some nifty new features that make it a standout in the meta search engine category.

Dogpile's new interface features cleaner, easier to read result listings. Dogpile also offered a new option for viewing results in addition to its traditional way of grouping up to ten results from each underlying engine together. The new option allows you to sort results by relevance -- in essence, listing the results that the most search engines "voted for" at the top of the list.

Also new are clustered result links that allow you to refine your search simply by clicking on automatically generated categories related to your query. This technology is provided by Vivisimo (our second place choice) and really helps you narrow your options by letting you drill down into narrower subtopics without having to use advanced search tools.

Perhaps most important, Dogpile is now clearly labeling sponsored results -- and even better, every sponsored result is clearly marked. In the past, we decided that Dogpile (and some other meta search engines) would be ineligible to win because we felt they did a poor job of delineating and disclosing paid listings from editorial matches. By clearly labeling every sponsored search result as a paid advertisement, we feel that Dogpile has gone beyond US Federal Trade Commission recommendations issued to search engines last year and has set a new standard for disclosure that all search engines should emulate.

Dogpile is one of four meta search engines operated by InfoSpace, which all use the same underlying technology, but have unique interfaces. The other three properties also scored well, with MetaCrawler getting 9 percent of the vote, and Excite and WebCrawler each claiming 6 percent.

Second Place: Vivisimo

Second place winner Vivisimo received 18 percent of the votes for winner in this category. Although Vivisimo won the best meta search award for the previous two years, we gave it second place this year for several reasons.

First, the site is intended as more of a technology showcase than a destination web site. Second, the number of engines Vivisimo searches has declined this year, and these are sources that for the most part use indexes provided by others.

Vivisimo currently only searches MSN (Inktomi), Netscape (Google), Lycos (AllTheWeb), LookSmart and Overture. It does offer a unique advanced search form, allowing you to meta search and get clustered results from a number of news sources and specialized databases, such as FirstGov, Business.com and PubMed.

Honorable Mention: Mamma, HotBot

Mamma is our runner up this year, gaining 6 percent of the winner vote, placing it fifth behind Dogpile, Vivisimo, Copernic Agent and WebCrawler. We feel it has become a worthwhile service to consider now that it has followed Dogpile's lead in disclosing sponsored links in search results. You'll find some nice query refinement links, though these aren't quite as useful as Dogpile's clustered results.

HotBot technically isn't a meta crawler, in that it doesn't search several search engines all at once. However, it is unique in providing direct, dependable and easy access to the web's four major crawler-based search engines: Inktomi (use the HotBot button), AllTheWeb (use the Lycos button, and note that LookSmart results appear for more popular queries), Google and Teoma (use the Ask Jeeves button). We felt it deserved honorable mention recognition. Don't like HotBot's unusual colors? Skin it with your own!

Copernic Agent earning 12 percent of the popular vote, placed third. Last year, we named it a winner in this category. This year, because it is a downloadable piece of software, we decided ultimately that it deserved recognition in the Search Toolbar category -- see below.

We listed many other meta search engines on the voting form, including Ixquick, Kartoo, Search.com, Profusion, Fazzle and SurfWax, but none of these received more than 5 percent of the popular vote. This doesn't mean you shouldn't use them. They all offer interesting, and in many cases unique features that can be quite helpful, depending on the type of searching you're doing. Links to them can be found on our Metacrawlers page.

Best News Search Engine

This category recognizes outstanding performance in helping internet users locate news from across the web. For examples, see the News Search Engines area within Search Engine Watch.

Winner: Google News  

This year's awards for best news search engine are virtually a mirror image of last year's, with one exception: Google News screamed ahead of all other services in the popular vote, garnering an impressive 62 percent of the 641 votes (compared with last year's 41 percent).

Google did little to improve its already impressive service during the year other than adding several regional versions and free news alerts. Search Engine Watch readers clearly feel it is the best news search engine, and we're awarding based on their votes.

 

Second Place: Yahoo News

Yahoo News beefed up its news coverage this year, adding thousands of sources from Moreover and an RSS feed.

Yahoo News also offers numerous features not available on Google News, such as Full Coverage collections highlighting the best news stories related to important current events, news message boards, audio and video clips, and other features.

Yahoo News received just 22 percent of the popular vote -- not a bad showing, but far behind Google.
 

Honorable Mention: AltaVista & Daypop

Honorable mention goes to AltaVista News, which earned 3 percent of the popular vote. We also considered giving AllTheWeb News an honorable mention, as we did last year, but did not.

Why? It appears both AltaVista News and AllTheWeb News are using the same underlying database now that they are both owned by Yahoo. And since the search results are virtually identical, the honorable mention goes to AltaVista for its superior user interface and features.

Daypop earns our other honorable mention, due to its continued strength in indexing weblogs and its interesting features such as "word bursts" and "news bursts" that surface heightened usage of certain words in weblogs and on the front pages of online news sources.

Best Image Search Engine

This category recognizes outstanding performance in helping internet users locate images from across the web. For examples, see the Image Search Engines area within Search Engine Watch.

Winner: Google Images

As with last year, we relied strongly on reader
opinion in choosing a winner for this category.
And as with last year, Google was their clear
choice, receiving 73 percent of the 663 votes
cast in the category.


 

Second Place: AltaVista Images

AltaVista was the clear second place winner,
earning 13 percent of the vote behind Google.
When we explicitly asked what service should
win for second place, AltaVista got the most
votes, with 30 percent.


 

Best Shopping Search Engine

This category recognizes outstanding performance in helping internet users shop for products from across the web. For examples, see the Shopping Search Engines area within Search Engine Watch.

Winner: Yahoo Shopping

Unlike many of the other categories in this year's Search Engine Watch awards, there was no majority winner for shopping search. Froogle received 23 percent of the 553 votes, with Yahoo Shopping right behind it with 22 percent (there were only three actual votes between them).

We opted to make Yahoo Shopping the winner here for several reasons. Yahoo Shopping offers many more features to assist in the overall shopping experience, including tools to help investigate products, reviews by both professionals and users, and a wide range of comparison shopping tools.

Yahoo also gave its shopping service a major upgrade this year, adding an Inktomi-powered crawl of the web for products to supplement its own merchants and merchant feeds. It also is experimenting with some cool features, like the SmartSort tool that lets you visually manipulate product features that are important to you. See this SearchDay article for more about the relaunch.

Second Place: Froogle & Shopping.com

Froogle remains a "beta" product from Google, so it lacks the polish and features you may find at Yahoo Shopping. However, it offers a fantastically deep index of products from across the web. It's great if you already know what you want and are just looking for the best price.

Shopping.com (formerly Dealtime) was earned 16 percent of the popular vote, behind Yahoo Shopping and Froogle. It also offers a comprehensive set of tools and information to help with the overall shopping experience. It's well worth a visit by anyone seeking a shopping search engine.
 

Honorable Mention: Kelkoo, BizRate & mySimon

We gave out several honorable mention awards to shopping search engines that polled well in our survey, though not enough to make them win or land in second place.

Kelkoo, a European shopping search engine, gained 8 percent of the votes for a winner. BizRate, which completely revamped its search engine this year, earned 7 percent of the winner votes, as did long time shopping search engine player mySimon.


 

Best Design

This category recognizes the search engine deemed to have a look and feel most liked.

Winner: Google

Last year's winner Google once again easily outdistanced the competition in the popular voting, which we based the awards in this category on. It earned 57 percent of the votes for a winner -- far above the next popular choice, Yahoo, with 9 percent.

"Simple is beautiful," wrote one person who voted for Google. "Less is more," wrote another. The comments echoed those that we've heard in past years. A clean, simple design remains a hit with many people.

 

Second Place: Yahoo & AllTheWeb

Both Yahoo and AllTheWeb earned nearly the same share in the voting for a winner, 9 percent and 8 percent respectively. All remaining services earned 4 percent or less. On the strength of this, we gave both services the second place award for Best Design.

Two who voted for AllTheWeb cited its clean design, and one liked its skinning functionality. Two who voted for Yahoo made it clear they were in favor of the pure search version it offers.

 

Most Webmaster Friendly Search Provider

The idea behind this category is to allow readers to vote for the search provider that they feel does the best job of sending them quality "organic" or "natural" traffic with the least amount of work.

Winner: Google

In the wake of complaints after Google's recent algorithm changes, we wondered if the service would finally fall from favor in this category. It did not. In fact, it was the clear choice, earning 61 percent of the 535 votes cast. We made Google the winner based on this performance.

How might Google still do so well, after so many complaints from site owners? It's important to remember that for everyone who lost traffic, someone else gained. In addition, a sizeable number of people were not impacted by the algorithm shift at all.
 

Second Place: Yahoo

In voting for a winner, the Yahoo-owned search engines all came after Google and scored nearly the same: Inktomi with 9 percent, AllTheWeb with 8 percent, Yahoo at 7 percent and AltaVista with 6 percent.

We also asked explicitly who should win second place. Here, the votes were more decisive. Yahoo earned the most, 23 percent of the 397 votes cast. Google followed at 16 percent, then AllTheWeb and AltaVista tied at 15 percent, followed by Inktomi at 13 percent. All others were 9 percent or less.

Yahoo was clearly the top second place choice among readers, so we went with them in awarding it second.

Honorable Mention: Inktomi & AllTheWeb

Inktomi gained the second highest number of votes after Google to be winner in this category, 9 percent, as noted above. It didn't win for second place, because as explained, Yahoo seemed the better choice. However, its performance did merit an honorable mention.

Similarly, AllTheWeb earns an honorable mention for being ranked so well in the voting for both winner in this category and for second place consideration.

Best Paid Placement Service

This category recognizes the best paid program providing guaranteed placement in search engine results.

Winner: Google AdWords

Google was the winner in this category based on
the popular voting, earning 48 percent of the 475
votes cast. We're going with what our readers said,
on this one.

Here's a sampling of the few written comments
received:
 

• Google holds the crown here for me simply because of ease of use and accessibility.
• Google AdWords is the best so long as you opt out of [AdSense]. In my experience, their AdSense publishers are worse than the affiliates on any PPC service.
• [AdSense] doesn't work for us, but traditional PPC is great.
• Google outperforms Overture every month.
• I know Jupiter Research [owned by the same company as Search Engine Watch] ranked Overture as the number one pay-per-click search engine this past year, but I, as an internet marketer, strongly disagree. I really hate their editors changing headlines that I've already thoroughly tested on Google AdWords. And I dislike their ranking by price only, too. That means really poor conversion ads can be in the number one spot. Stupid. One last thing: Overture traffic doesn't convert nearly as well as Google AdWords traffic.

Second Place: Overture

Overture was a very strong second, earning a healthy 35 percent of the popular vote.

Last year, Overture also came behind Google. The percentage gap was wide, Google earning 52 percent to Overture's 41 percent, an 11 percentage point gap. However, the vote gap was so small -- Google getting only 22 actual votes more than Overture -- that we declared a tie for winner.

This year, the gap is broader: 13 percentage points. The vote gap is also broader, with Google ahead by 64 votes.

In addition, when we asked explicitly who should win the second place award, here Overture led, earning 39 percent of the 360 votes cast compared to Google, which came next at 28 percent of the votes.

Given the vote, we award Overture second place in this category. However, we'd stress that anyone doing search engine advertising would be remiss not to use both Overture and Google's services. They have largely non-duplicated audiences and excellent reputations. If you are looking for the broadest reach and generally good conversion, you'd want to use both of them.

Here are some written comments received along with votes for Overture:

• Unquestionably, Overture is the hands-down winner!
• The Google AdWords tool is easier to use than Overture's and we get more hits from them. However, our ROI is much better with Overture. That's what matters, isn't it? Also, the Google ads are too small and there are far too many of them per page. We can create more effective ads using Overture than Google.
• Overture has much better before-bid research tools that I use in my web design. Google has an easier way to assign many terms to one or several ads. Google's money-management is also easier. So Overture before the fact, Google after. (I use both for all my clients.)
• No longer use Google. Nuisance rules and performance monitoring.

Honorable Mention: FindWhat, Espotting & Mirago

In votes for a winner, FindWhat came third after Overture, earning 4 percent of the vote. It was also tied for third in the voting for a second place choice, earning 7 percent there.

While the percentages are low, they do indicate that for those seeking an alternative to the monster services of Google and Overture, FindWhat is a top choice to consider. Based on the voting, we thought it deserved an honorable mention.

One person who voted for Overture also noted: "If the traffic was anywhere close to that from Overture or Google, I'd have chosen FindWhat for second place."

Espotting is a European paid listings service that has lost partnerships and distribution since it won in the European paid listing category that we had last year. We decided not to repeat that separate category this year. However, we felt the voting did warrant giving Espotting an honorable mention. It polled 3 percent of the winner vote, following behind FindWhat, and it tied with FindWhat as a second place choice.

Mirago, another European paid listing service, received no votes. That's not surprising, since it wasn't even on the voting form. But in hindsight, we decided an honorable mention was warranted to highlight two advances that Mirago made over the past year to give advertisers more choice: traffic source selection and dayparting. To our knowledge, it has lead the industry in both of these fronts, and we'd like other paid listing providers catch up.

Best Search Toolbar

New for this year, the Search Toolbar category was created based on the popularity of these utilities and if only to prevent people from continually voting for toolbars as "search features," described more in the next category. For more about search toolbars, see the Search Toolbar area within Search Engine Watch.

Winners: Google Toolbar & Groowe Toolbar

Google was the clear winner in voting, earning 68 percent of all 646 votes cast. We agree it deserves to win. The tool has gained new enhancements this year, not all of which are related to search. But it remains a dependable, helpful way to get more out of Google easily, providing push button access to special features.

Groowe received practically no votes -- only 1 percent of those cast. How can it be winner? Because it's one of the few search toolbars that has actually survived staying switched on within Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan's browser!

Groowe is simplicity itself. It's a fast install. It lets you mimic the search toolbar features of those offered by Google and others or provides easy push button access to special features. If you want to hit multiple search engines, without installing many different toolbars, then Groowe is for you.

Second Place: Alexa Toolbar

Alexa was the second most popular choice after Google, gaining 7 percent of the vote for a winner. When we explicitly asked who should win for second place, Alexa came out on top -- getting 21 percent of the 348 votes cast.

We go with the voting in naming the Alexa Toolbar as our second place choice. It's a great toolbar, providing access to Google-powered results combined with access to Alexa's own unique ratings and information about sites from across the web.

 

Copernic Agent

Copernic Agent is meta search software that brings back results from multiple search engines to your desktop (see this SearchDay review for more information).

Copernic Agent was a winner in last year's meta search category -- and this year, it was ranked third in that category, earning 12 percent of the popular vote.

We felt the strength of that vote was enough to warrant an honorable mention. However, as Copernic Agent is software, we thought better to include it here as a great search utility.

By the way, Copernic does offer a separate toolbar version, but that version operates differently than the agent. That toolbar was listed among the voting choices for this category, but it was not among those that received the most votes.

Best Search Feature

This category recognizes the best feature offered by a search engine to help users locate information. No features were listed in drop-down boxes on the voting form. Instead, voters were asked to write-in what their favorite features were.

Winner: Google Definitions & AllTheWeb URL Investigator

The top two most popular choices in the voting were Google Spell Checking and Google Cached Links, earning 27 percent and 10 percent of the 211 votes cast, respectively. Both are wonderful features. We love them. But both have also won in past years in this category, so we looked to recognize some new features as winners for this year.

Google Definitions are new, a former Google Labs project that Google rolled out officially last year. Google Definitions were the top choice in the voting once the aforementioned other Google features were eliminated, earning 9 percent of the vote. We think they are a handy, easy way to see how people across the web define different subjects. Going with the voting, we make Google Definitions this year's winner.

Yahoo, by the way, has a similar define feature. However, we like how Google leverages web content to bring up a range of definitions, rather than depending on single (though authoritative) source.

AllTheWeb's URL Investigator was also launched last year. It's a simple yet incredibly helpful tool for anyone who wants to learn more about a particular URL or domain name. You can easily discover things such as all the pages indexed within a domain, jump to an Internet Archive link to see past versions of a page, discover related subdomains, view the language of a page, when it was last changed, the document size and all the external pages linking to the URL. The URL Investigator won 3 percent of the general vote in this category, behind some other suggestions. However, we like it enough that we're naming it as a winner for this year.

Google does have a similar undocumented investigator-style feature. However, this is more limited in scope. In addition, AllTheWeb's will show you all the links it knows about that point at a document. Google only shows some of the links it know about. This omission of some links is not disclosed to searchers on its help page about reverse link lookups, nor will Google explain exactly which links it suppresses from display (for Search Engine Watch members, this issue is covered more in this article: Reader Q&A: August 2003).

Second Place: Google Calculator & AllTheWeb Calculator

The Google Calculator is another new feature the company rolled out this year, allowing you to add, subtract, convert measures and do an amazing range of calculations within the Google search box. The calculator earned 6 percent of the vote, just behind Google Definitions. We award it second place based on its usefulness and the votes received.

AllTheWeb also offers its own calculator, first made available in mid-2002 but publicized more in early 2003. We felt it earned a second place alongside Google's. It may not have the range of things that Google's can calculate and convert, but the instructions for AllTheWeb's are much more clear about what exactly it can and cannot do -- and what it can do will still be very useful to many people.

Honorable Mention: Google Web API  & Ask Jeeves Dictionary Search

The Google Web API is not a feature that a searcher would use. Instead, in enables programmers to create special applications that make use of Google's search results. We like the idea of a search engine letting people come up with creative uses for its data in this fashion. Applications have ranged from providing crossword puzzle clues to the popularity of movies. Though the Google API program was launched in 2002, we felt it really became popularized last year and deserving of an honorable mention.

Ask Jeeves Dictionary Search is also similar to Google Definitions, in that if you enter a search for "define" followed by what you want to look up, you have access to definitions (click here to see an example). You can find a single definition, get access to definitions from many dictionaries, search reference material or browse specialty dictionary. It provides easy access to a great set of reference links.

Unfortunately, we don't like that the material pops up in a frame, and the feature isn't documented at all on the site. So, it's not quite in winner category as with Google Definitions, but it does deserve honorable mention.

Best Specialty Search Engine

We decided not to issue first or second place awards in this category, because of the 277 write-in votes received, the vast majority were for specialized search engines that received awards last year.

The voting form did suggest reviewing last year's winners for ideas about what specialty search engines to nominate. But instead of getting new suggestions, it seems to have simply reinforced all the same services that were already recognized.

Don't get us wrong -- all the services we recognized last year are excellent, and the high number of votes attest to their popularity. Do make use of them! But to make this category more meaningful, we'll review ideas on how to better present a selection of tools to place in front of voters for next year.

Here were the top choices, all of which do earn honorable mentions for gaining 8 percent or more of the votes cast. All others earned 4 percent or less.

Honorable Mention:

• Internet Archive (11 percent of vote)
• Scirus (10 percent of vote)
• Google Groups (8 percent of vote)

To learn more about these services, see last year's awards.

General Comments

The last question on the voting form allowed people to leave general comments. Here's a sampling:

• Search engines are better than ever. More useful to consumers and citizens, more an integral part of our world. It's a little unfortunate that so many users consider only Google (although Google is great), but that may change and the pressure that the other engines keep on Google by their constant improvement makes everyone better off.
• SE firms need a means or being able to regionalize their results better - perhaps by incorporating some kind of area code tag in the META info. If I'm searching for info on Cancer I'll get all of the standard type results but if I'm looking for Cancer, NY maybe a means of ONLY obtaining listings in NY would be preferred, via a '212' type tag.
• Looking forward to Yahoo's melding of its search properties and use of Inktomi in place of Google results. Dreading MSN search entry into field as they destroy competitors, rather than compete against them. Looking forward to development of Nutch as an alternative and specialty search as an outgrowth of the top three dominant engines. MSN, Yahoo, Google will dominate, now who innovates?
• I've been an online marketing consultant since 1997. IMHO Google has made a number of very bad strategic decisions, and the search landscape is about to change dramatically. The old adage of "don't fix it unless it's broke" still applies, and not only have they attempted to completely change everything, but they've now created an underlying current of ill will and resentment from many webmasters, SEOs and small business owners. The seeds have been sown, and unless a major directional shift is undertaken to correct it, big changes are ahead in the world of search.
• I'm looking forward to seeing page thumbnails in search results one of these days (from anybody). Page design goes a long way toward establishing credibility, so seeing a quick representation of the design would help in finding a "reputable"-looking page. What's more, over-optimized doorway pages usually have a tangibly under-designed appearance, so they'd be easier for the user to avoid.
• I use Google no matter what the computer I am using provides me with as a default. Sometimes I use Google's Image Search as a way to search for better websites, not just images. It's clean design is appealing and I rarely have trouble finding what I want.
• I really like what Yahoo is doing to the search. Maybe next year it will be Yahoo and Google!
• Google is overrated and is not focused, pulling their search is a joke. Really liked AllTheWeb until they googlized it. The Open Directory used to be good now they are sooooooo far behind.
• Google is like Microsoft. You hate them but have to use them.
• Google is by far the most innovative provider of search services in the world.
• Google continues to prioritize performance rather than profits. (How much longer, eh?)
• Note to search engines: keep the paid cr@p outta my face and show me the *real* results'
• Go Google Go!!!! Keep ahead of the pack for a few more years, please.
• Where can I vote Search Engine Watch the Best of the Best Newsletters? I love you guys!

We love you too! And our sincere thanks to all those who voted, especially to those who took the time to leave detailed comments. We did read through them all.

Thanks also to Jupitermedia staffers Aytekin Tank for help with our polling script, our newsletter production team for getting vote mailings out and Kevin Lane for producing this year's logos.

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