Former Community – We Moved
🆕 Coached community here, for posts & feedback public community here.
You.com Challenges Google for Search Engine Dominance with $20M Seed Round
There's a new search engine round the block:
https://you.com/
Salesforce CEO is supporting the new search engine as well:
Salesforce CEO Benioff invests in search engine startup You.com
Founded last year by two former top AI scientists at Salesforce, You.com lets users set preferred websites.
I am aware that Salesforce has been working on building up its AI research.
The search engine was in beta until 9 Nov 2021.
Now anyone can try out the new search engine.
It's not as good as Google.
But I'm looking forward to a new competitor.
Thank you for sharing, Matthew!
Looks pretty awesome to me.
More often in the last few months I was disappointed with Google's results, so definitely going to try You.com whenever that happens again.
P.S.:
I'm biased because it seems that TPM features even higher there.
But what I like even more is that it seems to rank articles based on "most foundational" rather than "flashiest".
For example, for frame control, it ranks "basics of frame control" first:
And searching "leadership" on TPM, it puts "leadership 101" first:
Google instead lists the "10 frame control tactics" as #1 for "frame control" and "13 laws" for leadership's articles on TPM.
Both solid articles, but I think that 90% of users would be better served starting from the basics first.
I'm biased because it seems that TPM features even higher there.
We are power-aligning with the rising star :).
By the way, I didn't know you won the first entry for frame control.
This is what I got for the same searches in Incognito:
You.com
Quote from Matthew Whitewood on November 12, 2021, 2:23 pmWe are power-aligning with the rising star :).
Good one :D
Yeah, "frame control" is not one of the concepts this website first came up with, but I'd say that it took it to new levels of depth and sophistication (especially in PU, since the articles are probably 1/10 of what's in PU).
Edit: typos
Yeah, "frame control" is not one of the concepts this website first came up with, but I'd say that it took it to new levels of depth and sophistication (especially in PU, since the articles are probably 1/10 of what's in PU).
Definitely! The frame control modules are top-notch.
I think, technique-wise, they may actually set the foundation for other modules.
In terms of strategy and concepts, social exchange, assertiveness, high-power behaviour, low-lower behaviour are the modules that set the foundation.
I'm thinking about the different ways that these modules can come together.
Always liked mindmaps for this reason.
Mindmaps give a visual representation that linear formats cannot give (books, sidebars, etc).
That's awesome feedback, thank you Matthew, I wasn't yet thinking in terms of foundations / "cornerstones".
And maybe drawing that mindmap as either a summary or intro is one of the best ways to represent and tie the concepts together.
Thinking about it.
One area where You.com is a clear winner to me is when it comes to many food-related queries.
Google seems to force in the results a bunch of recipes, even when looking for something else.
For example, the search:
How to cook brussel sprouts
In google the whole first page is about recipes:
I've experienced something similar many times with Google when searching for food-related queries.
It kept serving recipes, and I truly had to dig deep to find what I was looking for.
You.come is much better.
First row is recipes, and then right below, still above the fold, is what I'm looking for:
Thanks for sharing this Lucio!
Now I know where to search when it comes to food.
It also made me realise the importance of the user interface and experience for search engines.
And how that can affect what goes on behind the scenes to bring the relevant results to the user.
Google seems to follow a somewhat linear ranking system.
They have tried to get around this by introducing a relevant category bar like "Recipes" in your screenshot.
- Classify your query and show one category that most likely closely matches the query
There's also mini-bars indicating videos, Twitter posts, Reddit pages, etc but I consider this to be channels rather than categories - Ranks the other search results linearly
On the other hand, You.com will
- Classify your query and show a few categories likely matching the query.
- Rank the results in each category rather than showing a single, giant, linear ranked result
This would likely make more sense when you are looking for
- Results within a single category, or
- The top results for each category
Google likely has the other categories as well but didn't show them in the user interface.
I'm thinking that, in the future, search engines may be able to do sub-questions.
You ask the main question, get the queries and ask a follow-up sub-question to clarify.
Kind of like retrieval-based chatbots like Intercom. (Not the social chatbots)
Except with a much bigger space to display the search results, and the search results change with your new sub-questions.
Yes, that's a way of looking at it that I hadn't thought of.
By using categories, you.com is giving itself more chances to get one right.
I like that approach a lot.
And I still gotta wonder if most men looking for "how to cool Brussel sprouts" are more likely to want to see fancy recipes, or the simplest ways to go from raw to edible :).
