It’s been a very interesting ride, doing this whole week without using any search engines of any kind. Many people took bets too see how long I would last. Mike McDonald said three, David Brown said 2, Carolyn Shelby wished me good luck, and Brian Mark didn’t think I’d miss it.

Well, I lasted all Five Days (I meant business week, what do you think, I’m a masochist?) of which I blogged about 3. Let me give you a recap of how day 4 and 5 went. (luckily I kept some notes)

DAY 4

Day 4 was a busy work day for me, so I didn’t have a big issue with searching on that day. I did a couple of experiments, however, on Facebook and Digg, for a little issue I was having with asp.net. This is old techo babble stuff, but I’ve never had a problem with it until now. Briefly, in asp.net web applications, you can create a custom error page in a dynamic website that will show when a page goes missing. Up pops an error page you define to let the user know “Whoopsee, looks like the page your looking for is fubar.” Problem is, this error page sends out a 302 redirect message. Most of my three readers are SEO inclined so you know that ain’t the worst problem around, but not elegant. So I tried Facebook and Digg for the results.

Facebook, predictably, came up with caca booty. Facebook isn’t really an information gateway anyway, it’s a people gateway. Now, lately I’ve really become freakin’ tired of being bitten by werewolves and attacked by zombies, so I killed all those applications. Now, however, I’m being auctioned off in some weirdo human slavery deal where people bid on other people. Seems I’m worth $60,000 dollars now. Look, all these quirky little Facebook apps are nice, but not what I’m there for. I’m there to connect with people, not be rundown by Vampires and Warriors. Facebook let’s you opt out of these games, but I wish they’d let you opt out of these games before hand. Something that says, “Don’t bite me, poke me, push me, pinch me, attack me, give me a teddy bear, hang me, hit me with a brick, run me over with a car, or give me a venereal disease. I just want to connect with people on a friendly and professional level, leave the violence for fighters.com“

So I moved on to Digg, and did a search, and come up with a big ugly page that said, “I ain’t got nothin’ for you man.” Digg, to me, is a double sided blade. You can’t say that Digg is not a good place for broad information. In fact for the most part, I believe that the stories that become popular and hit the first page really deserve to be there. Sometimes I get info I’ve never seen before, and I like that. Other times, I wonder why “12 good ways to peel your skin after a sunburn” is a good article. It seems that a a good amount of the articles that get the big old POPULAR tag and hit Digg’s front page tend to fall into a very common formula. Here’s the formula for the Title for your diggable article.

(some attractive number) ways to (do something)

or

(some attractive number) reasons why your (body part or bank account) is not (performing in some particular way) and how to (fix it, kill it, or eat it)

For craps and giggles, I did a check, just to see, on an odd number of “reasons” articles.

10 reasons

8 reasons

12 reasons

You know what makes this funnier, is that I only did the first search, and just replaced the number param in the url. Neat huh?

What’s especially hilarious are the “Holy Shit check this out” articles. Some winners in their boyo.

DAY 5

By this time, I was just feeling like I was in serious withdrawal. I open up Google just to look at it. I check my gmail, check my calendar, then log out and close my browser. Again, it was a busy work day, so I did not have a lot of search to do. But I wanted my last day to be something a little more than just petering out of this experiment. So I came up with some search terms that I was planning to search for as because my wife wanted some help. I tried Ma.gnolia again, and again, it just errored out. I tried the tags, and it took 47 seconds for the tag page I clicked on to load (if it did at all, same errors there as well). Sorry Larry, you have an AWESOME concept, but it’s just not working for me right now. Again, if I’m doing something wrong, tell me, but I don’t think that you want your application to perform like this.

So I go down the list

reddit

mister wong

del.icio.us

MySpace

xing

Mashable

on three search terms that I figured where everyday affairs. I even looked for some of the beauty products I represent. In some cases, I found opinions about something somewhat related to what I was searching for, but nothing very relevant. Good discovery though. I can say that I enjoyed clicking through things that I found interesting. But I did not enjoy NOT finding what I was looking for.

CONCLUSION:

I’m not sure how exactly to wrap this little puppy up. I mean, there are some obvious technical conclusions that have been pretty consistent over this experiment. There are some areas of life on the internet that you can construe as not suffering from a lack of search engines, like shopping. However, that’s not altogether a fair statement either. All the shopping comparison sites are exactly what they say they are, if all merchants could be in the program. If you use the tools at hand, you can compare prices and features for everything listed. Therein lies a different problem. Those sites that do not join the Pay Per Click program of the shopping comparison sites are out of the loop. How would know that you could save money on an item if the company that sells it for the best value doesn’t list it in your comparison shop of choice. That’s not to say you won’t find what your looking for, but it’s an exclusive search based on an economic segregation. In other words, it’s not all there.

General topic searches are somewhat ok via social networks and social bookmarking sites. On a certain level, topical references are easily found via the social sites. The biggest and most loved social knowledge site on the planet, wikipedia, did not escape my test. But as awesome as wikipedia is, it is still not the repository for the subjective information that occupies most search. Wikipedia has plenty of information, but lacks grossly for information on human curiosity concepts. I’ve faced it before, but not so grossly exaggerated as I did on wikipedia. You can find all the information you want on a Toyota Corolla, but you’ll never find a picture of a blue 4 door Toyota Corolla, or where you can see one locally. Just won’t happen.

I found that blogs are great source for information, as long as your on the right blog. I know that sounds simplistic, but in every sense of the word, it’s true. Blogs tend to be about one persons point of view on a subject, or on a given group of subjects, and these subjects are usually related to each other. For example, if I go to Todd Malicoat’s blog to search for a Florida Drivers Licens, I get bupkiss.  Blog interaction is a total social experience, though for the most part, one sided. If you trust the authority of the blogger, then when you find a blogger that is exceptionally good at say, pick up trucks, the day your interested in buying yourself a Ford F150, you can probably find some good information on it from a blog, IF, someone actually took the time to write up about the truck, AND if you can find that blog.  Can’t do it without a search engine though.  So here is a long way to go to see if there is a blog with the specific info you found.  Go to wordpress.com, search for Ford F150, see if any of the blog posts from the community make sense, read through a blog, maybe, maybe, if someone took the time out to review one or blog about their experience with one, you’ll find it. And maybe, maybe, if that person actually linked to a place where you can buy one, AND maybe, maybe, if that link is someone close by.  Not for nothing, but do you see how fucked up that is?

And then there is the very real psychological ramifications as well.  I mean, my original thesis was correct.  Searching is in our nature, it’s a physical and mental act we do every single day of our lives.  The search engines, I think, are the naturally occurring solution to the necessity.  If I need to find purple doggy diapers, I can SEARCH for purple doggy diapers.  I bet you a whole dollar that it will be HAF (you know what it means) to FIND that information via bookmarks.  You might, but after hours of clicking and looking.  One search on any of the SE’s, gets you instant gratification.  And that act is empowering.  A world of information is at your fingertips and no matter how you formulate your search, you get a pretty spot on answer.  That’s an empowerment that we tend to take for granted.

You have a search engine in front of you, your EMPOWERED.  You have the power in your fingertips to draw information on a GLOBAL level, or on a localized, specific level.  When I intentionally gave that power up, I actually felt that loss.  Some days I really did feel helpless.  The power of the internet was gone.  I lost it.  I don’t have anything command over what happens in front of this typewriter with a TV on it.  Trying to work without quick answers was difficult to say the least.   Why did I ever start this?

Here is the short answer and the short ending.

I wanted to find out what it was like without search engines.   Sometimes it was fun, sometimes it was most definitely not.   Sometimes it was productive serendipity, sometimes it was useless info.

It was always “not what I wanted.”

The internet is still VERY powerful, but without search engines, that power is out of your hands.

Ouch. I mean…ouch. Yes, NOT searching is definitely hurting. I shit you not, I actually got a pretty major headache yesterday, and I think I can attribute some of it to the stress of not using search.

My wife asked me to try to find a comforter online, while she attended our new puppy Maxine. Apparently, Maxxie needed a full baby wipe body rub at that moment, and I needed to do the online shopping.

Online shopping ain’t to bad really. There are plenty of click aggregators (whoops, comparison shopping sites) that you can try, and there are two really good social shopping sites that have pretty good internal search algo’s.

I’ve talked about thisnext and kaboodle before, and for finding the coolest of what your looking for, not bad at all. However, coolest is not necessarily cheapest. There are a ton of comforters at thisnext, and going through them all, for a guy, is not fun. I’m amazed by the tech, and loved the selection, but I don’t have the patience to go through each one. Maybe my wife does, and she has, but I’m a guy, and I like quick and easy.

So off I go to Shopping.com, (durr, what’s that?) and do my thing. I’m looking for a comforter in the 40-80 buck range, so I type in comforter (durr) look at the selection, click on the neat price range on the left (durrrr) and voila, a bunch of stuff.

Of course, my wife might not exactly enjoy the way I shop, especially since she is the epitome of a smart shopper.

“Why didn’t you start your search on Google?” she says.

“Cause I’m kind of doing this no Search Engine thing honey” I sez.

(Scooby Doo Baroo) “Huh? That’s starting to get a little annoying.” she says.

“I know, but it’s science.” I sez.

But, she was ok with the purchase.

Shopping doesn’t seem like too big of a problem as long as their are comparative shopping sites, BUT, in a very practical matter, there is no guarantee that your getting a good value, and not all shops use the comparison shopping sites. (Some just can’t afford it)

Ok so done with that. On to wordpress stuff.

I like wordpress. I like messing with themes, and finding plugins, and stuff like that. In the past, all you had to do was head on over to wordpress.org, and do the do. But now, since wordpress is ALL OVER THE PLACE, you can find themes, plugins, stuff, all over the web, if you search, which I don’t (this week) So I check out my bookmarks.

There are the obvious first stops. I head on over to the Wordpress Plugin Directory and I check out their internal search. Then over to WP Plugins.

Both have pretty decent internal searches, and I find what I’m looking for. But I want to check out another social bookmarking site I’ve heard of, Mister Wong. On the whole, Mister Wong is pretty neat. Nice tags, relevant to what I’m looking for, it looks like it has a serious community, and not too bad on the spam. It seems that the administrators are really keeping a close watch on what gets bookmarked. The internal search was pretty good too. You can search both tags and content. Definitely something that brightened my day, and something to watch as well.

So there you go, a brighter day in non searching, but I still feel achy all over. Hey Mike! I made it past the three days!

Oh dear readers, I have to tell you that I’m hurtin’. Being my second day without search, the withdrawal I’m feeling is very much like what happened to me when I tried to back off of caffeine. I’m just jittery. I can admit that I have gone to the Google homepage and just looked at it, with dreams of typing in a slew of necessary search queries and just finding things to my heart’s content.

OK, well, on with the show.

Again, I’ve come up against the major roadblock in using social bookmarking and social networks for any kind of search. This is a bitter sweet experiment, because even though my obvious problems with trying to use these kinds of sites for search often end in tragedy, the discovery is fantastic.

So yesterday I’m trying to find a css solution. First stop, a site we all know well, A List Apart. See, I’m a terrible script librarian (meaning I don’t save my favorite scripts until it’s obvious I use them more than once) so I need a good CSS horizontal menu. Of course, the first place I go to is A List Apart, who’ve been the center for good css design practices for longer than I’ve known what good css design practices where. The internal search worked like a charm and I found exactly what I was looking for.

Next, I’m trying to find good advertising partners related to the beauty products vertical, so I decided to got the THE REALLY BIG COMMUNITY. Wordpress.com (c’mon like they really need a link from me) I had been holding off until today, and to tell you the truth, the internal search algo was just ok, but here is where I found tagging to be a fantastic discovery tool. Wordpress.com has a global tagging feature that really helps for you to find postings based on what the authors Categorized or Tagged there post with.

For the most part, people with blogs tend to label or tag their post with something that is pretty spot on relevant, but from time to time, you get someone who tags their post with “beauty” and you’ll find a post about lemurs in Peru with necro-flesh disease who are probably wwaaayyyy the fuck over on the other side of “beauty”, so you wonder what that particular blogger was thinking of that day.

Blogs are cool because even though the blog you’re reading might not be “the expert in the field” but they might, and often do, link to the expert in the field. Nice.

Ok, so I needed to do a little personal searching during work hours. Don’t tell anybody ok? I might get in trouble. What did I do to? Checked out Massive Links. Fabio has been working this site for YEARS, and all of the dedication shows. Massive Links is part directory, part forum, part multi-user blog, part business listing, and ALL hand jammed. You think you’re a dedicated webmaster? Ha, Fabio laughs in your face. (Just kidding, one of the coolest guys I know) Now, you might be thinking “Oh rumblepup. your just touting for a friend” which I would, but I calls them as I sees them, and friend or no, I gonna tell you what’s right and what’s wrong at ML.

What’s right? I love the clicking. I mean, everything you could want to find is within a few clicks, and the subject of what you’re trying to find is pretty much there at your fingertips. Want a blog post about home decorating? Bingo. Want a forum discussion on rack servers? Bingo. Want a listing of business sites with further links to the most pertinent services? Bingo. I like it.

What wrong? A little (just a little) on the design consistency side. Some areas look different than others. No big deal, really, because navigation is consistent, but I’m sure ML is working on it.

So that was the end of day two. I didn’t do a lot of “Looking” because I’m busy building award winning websites that rake in massive amounts of money and are number 1 on the SERP’s all the time (get the sarcasm) but there are more to try, and tomorrow will be another day, without search.

I’m sure all three of my loyal readers are eager to find out how my day went yesterday. Well, I’m eager to tell you that it went…mezzo, mezzo.

I didn’t have to do a lot of search, up until I had to check SERP’s. You see, that’s my job, getting SERP’s. I started to feel a bit like a tard, thinking that my one week experiment in not using search in any way was a bit….ill conceived.

Aha, but wait! I have bookmarked some services that gave me a kinda, sorta view on where my serps where yesterday. Three of my favorites are:

Shoemoney’s SERP tool – It’s pretty straightforward. Shoemoney has got this great little tool that will check for your position in the major search engines all at one shot. After checking out a bunch of these tools, I have to admit that Shoe’s is one of my favorites. Direct, to the point, and pretty accurate.

Rank Checker by Seobook – Aaron Wall is just a really great mind folks, and the Rank Checker is another of his neat tools that give you a basic look-see of what’s actually happening out there.

seodigger – When it’s working, which sometimes it goes a little hooey, it’s a neat reverse lookup of where your site is listed for a given keyword. The service is goodly, in that all you have to do is pop in your url, and voila, you get a listing that is “somewhat” up to date of the keywords your site ranks for and where.

Of course, there is always Webmaster Tools, which gives you a weekly rundown of how your site is ranking for given terms, but it’s limited in that it only shows Google SERP’s. Good, but I need the info from the other SE’s as well.

So, the day progressed as so.

I really only had to do one search, for an asp.net control (yes, I’m a Microsux dude) I needed for some developing (no, I’m not a good coder in any way, shape, or form – I just play one on the internets) So I drop on by asp.net (go figure) and I start poking around. A search on their site, which is actually kind of a cool tabbed thinger, yields some results, but the problem is that the app I’m working on is still in asp.net v 1.1, and in the internet world, REALLY OLD. .Net developers LOVE new shiny toys, and everybody is working on .Net 3.0 beta, zeta, some such thing. Took me a while to find a reference to a blog post that when clicked on, lead to a 404 page.

Nuts.

Ok, off to something else. Before hitting the directories I’ve mentioned, I went to Ma.gnolia. I like the concept behind Ma.gnolia, and it has a soft spot in my heart, cause I did an interview with Larry Halff, but I have to admit, I got really flustered really quickly. (I found Ma.gnolia on a Matt Cutts post) I mean, the concept is cool. You bookmark your favorites, with your own tags, they come up under your profile, and you can join your bookmarks to groups, and each group has discussion forums (for lack of a better term) I mean, I really liked how the vibe (when I first joined) was “oooh, look what I found, what did you find, wow that cool” kind of thing.

But the performance! After just a few seconds I started sounding line Yosemite Sam after his foot has been blown off.

“YAH fricken fracken frookin, ricken racken FRACK!”

I tried from three different computers, just in case it was my problem, to try to just get to the tags. The first time I clicked on Everyone’s Tags, the website huuuuuunnnnngggggg theeeerrrreee for almost a full minute. Just when I thought that the page would pop up, blammo, 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable. DAMN! I checked again, and again. Nada. Ma.gnolia has had this problem with performance since it’s inception, and I was really hoping that some day they’d get it under control. But it was just too difficult to actually use it for discovery. I’m hoping I can try again today.

So, off to del.ico.us. We all know it, some of us use it, and I’ve always liked exploring it. But I think I came upon one of the problems with Social Bookmarking. Using the search function is del.ico.us worked pretty quickly, but if their algo uses tags as meta, then that explains why I couldn’t find what I was looking for. People tag bookmarks with a word or phrase that is:

1. Meaningful to them
2. Is a tag that corresponds with a high PR page.

So my search with terms that I found important where smacked up against the mob rule. Oh, I found some really killer stuff when I started clicking on tags, and I have to admit that the quality of the tags and what they represent are on the whole very, very good, but nobody on del.ico.us had tagged what I was specifically looking for.

By the way, I found a really good blog post on How To Integrate Google Checkout and Paypal In 3 Steps. Boy I need that.

Well, I tried both BOTW and DMOZ. Nothin. These are directories of sites, not of content. A phrase search doesn’t really work.

So I head over to HotSripts. OMFG (Nuff Said)

I bite the bullet and went on over to Mahalo, and just using the directory links I found their Programming Languages category page.  Uhmmm, Mr. Calcanis, asp.net might not be LAMP, but it does exist, for some time now as well.

So right them I threw in the towel.  No, not on my experiment, but on this particular thing I wanted.  IM’d a friend who had in his script librabry an asp.net 1.1 table data view control.  Before you even go ballistic and say that I could have rolled my own, which is true, go to hell, ’cause this was for science, and I’m a lazy shit.  So he sent it over to me, and that was the day.

So, my first day without search kinda sucked.  Social bookmarking and “discovery” sites are still the bomb in my book, but today’s experience has led me to believe that it’s solely for discovery, and not search.  Well, I’ll try again today, cause I have some interesting stuff to try to find.

Will someone please tell me what I missed if I had used search?

In my last post, Search Engines Are Dead, I told you guys how flustered I was with the idea that someone thinks that search engines are a thing of the past.  Well, “social” is very much alive, but a complete replacement for search?  I just don’t think so.

Search is part of our collective sub-conscious.  In the real world, aka, my desk, my bedroom, my living room, my car, I SEARCH for things, all the time.  You want to find an errant sock?  You search for it amongst the all the other socks that have been in the dryer for the past two days.  You want to find that receipt where you bought that laptop battery?  You search for it in your office, or your bedroom, or if your like me, somewhere in your car, probably under the car seat with the old candy wrappers and that pen you’ve been looking for since who knows when.

So I thought I’d challenge myself.  A pretty scary challenge it is.  I’m gonna try somethin’, and see how far I can get by just clicking links, or going to portals, or news sites, or social bookmarking sites, and not use search engines for one week.

That’s right, no Google, no Yahoo, no MSN, not even Ask, for one whole week.  (Damn, ok, I won’t use Mahalo either) I’ve been thinking about some self appointed rules for this little gambit of mine, to be a little realistic.  I’ve got a job to think about as well, so I can’t just give it all up for the sake of science, but I think I might be able to survive with the following rules.

1. I can’t use SEARCH ENGINES.  The basis of my experiment.  I can’t go to Google and type in “baby boogers” or anything else into the search box.  I can however, use the tools I’ve signed up for, like GMail, Gtalk, Yahoo! Mail, Calendar, and all the other stuff the SE’s give away so you’ll STAY there.
2. I can use my bookmarks.
3. I can go to websites I know from memory.
4. I can go to sites that my friends refer me to.
5. I can go to search results I find linked to in posts and forums.
6. I will allow myself to be led by friends to the right spot.
7. This one is important.  I can’t use search engines, but I can use the built in search of the sites I visit.  However, some sites use Google for their internal search.  I’m going to allow myself to use these because they are an internal search to the site alone.

So, what am I trying to prove or disprove.  I’m not sure, I’m not done with the experiment.  But I’m interested in what someone like myself, who knows how to use search, will find just by using blogs, social bookmarking, portal links, and news sites.  Can I find what I’m looking for?  (Neat, instead of search, I need to find)  Can I exist without SEARCH.  Hmmmmm.

Ok, off the top of my head, I’m going to start with these sites, and move on to blogs that I personally know of as well.  Well, the blogs are all SEO blogs, but they often link to important stuff as well.

del.icio.us – they’ve been at it for awhile, and I’m interested in really testing their algo.

Reddit – Same thing.

ma.gnolia - I did an interview with the founder, and I like the setup.

Digg - What, for real information?  Nah.  Good for finding funny pictures of Bush doing whiskey shots, but I sometimes question what digg’s users think of as super important information.  Hey, I use digg all the time to find very unique content, so I’m hoping that experience might also pay off for search.

Best of The Web – Shoemoney says that they should replace DMOZ as a bonafide directory.  I know that I like their MO more that the MOZ, so I’m gonna try it out.  But I still might use DMOZ from time to time.

So every day this week, I’ll let you know how the previous day went.  Along the way, if you want to point out some good sources, please do.  I have a feeling that I might need the help.  Please feel free to point out any sites or services where you think that I can find what I want by clicking or doing an INTERNAL search only.

My first order of business this week?

ASP.NET code for the new e-commerce site I’m building.

CSS – yes, I know some of the best spot, like AListApart.

Beauty News – I work for banler, I have to be up on the latest.

Odds and Ends?  Don’t know, I haven’t started wondering yet.

..

..

I’m not going to enjoy this, am I?