What comes to mind when you hear [Filipino search engine]? I can only think of Yehey and I’m not even sure if that qualifies as a true meta search engine. Alleba? Finder.ph? Please.
It’s not just about branding. To be called a true Filipino search engine, the system should return true Filipino content. According to Migs Paraz, the options available to determine which content is Filipino are limited at best: linking to a common Pinoy hub/authority site, using a unique Filipino identifying tag or joining a designated directory of Philippine websites. These data can then be fed to the existing search engines as additional search qualifiers. OR and I know Migs feels the same way: a new Filipino meta search engine needs to be built :)
The tools to implement this are already in place. Pinoyblogs.com and PinoyTopBlogs.com readily come to mind. An objective human-edited Pinoy directory should complete the puzzle.
October 28th, 2005 at 12:31 PM
Well there is DMOZ’z Philippine and Tagalog sections:
http://dmoz.org/Regional/Asia/Philippines/
http://dmoz.org/World/Tagalog/
Thats human edited and there seems to be a filipino mod
October 28th, 2005 at 3:23 PM
I hear you Andre. No disrespect to ODP, I love what they do, but putting the categorization and inclusion powers into the hands of a few will be counter productive. The directory I’m talking about needs to be separate. Editorial powers need to be decentralized.
November 2nd, 2005 at 3:31 AM
Well if you ask me the first thing that comes to mind is Google Philippines. Yehey is not a meta search engine. I believe their results are being fed by just Google, as does Alleba’s. I do think that it is high time that someone come up with a truly Filipino search engine. A good directory to start with is the ODP, although their listings are quite limited and disorganized. Alleba would also be a good option, but then again, they are very choosy and limited. Yehey’s directory is the worst, so forget about that. Tanikalang Ginto appears to be the most comprehensive, but I don’t appreciate their sloppy structure and most links are either dead or listed repeatedly. I think though that if we gather enough minds and resources we can finally have a great search engine that we can proudly call ‘Pinoy’. We are experiencing a great boom of Filipinos creating blogs. That in itself will be worth a ton if crawled by the search engine.
November 2nd, 2005 at 10:12 PM
Crawling is a well-explored topic now. The problem is that a machine can’t tell if a blog is Filipino or not.
November 8th, 2005 at 9:03 AM
This is because our concept of a search engine is the one that is like Google, Yahoo and MSN where the content of a whole website is being spidered and cached. Thus, all of the content are keywords. However, a searchable directory listing of Filipino websites with appropriate description like dmoz, for me I think, is enough to be called a search engine.
November 8th, 2005 at 9:23 AM
From someone (me) who had started a Pinoy-centric search engine in 1998 that actually became a portal for American schools such as UCLA, NYU, and University of Redlands — a site which still exists today, but in a different form — I have to ask: why? From someone who had been in the foxhole, I can say that creating a Pinoy-centric would be a thankless job for the creator. It is labor intensive and there is very little, if there is any at all, return on investment. No one now funds search engines, and viewers aren’t so friendly to advertising in whatever form (banners, text links ala-google, etc.). And placing a button for donations and actually getting some would be a miracle.
Although it would be a great benefit to the global Pinoy/Pinay community, at the end of the day, the question will be would the effort feed the creator’s family?
November 8th, 2005 at 6:25 PM
FS, probably not :)
November 8th, 2005 at 8:26 PM
Alfie, that solution is well explored with Yehey, Alleba, etc. At this point, users don’t want to go digging through directories anymore. They want to type in some keywords and get instant gratification.
January 15th, 2007 at 6:45 PM
Ouch, choosy & limited?? :)
January 16th, 2007 at 5:14 PM
Did I say that? :)