Bing launched a beta version of its visual search option this week. This "search" allows users to select from a pre-defined list of categories (currently the list is 50) and peruse images rather than search listings for results. Check it out yourself here: http://www.bing.com/visualsearch. With the launch of a new search technology, I thought it would be fun to revisit some other search engines besides the market leaders. When we discuss SEO, we typically focus on the main search engines (Google/Yahoo), but if your business is specialized, you may get more bang for your buck by focusing on PPC or submitting content to more specialized search engine sites.

One of the most competitive spaces these days seems to be real time information on the Web. Twitter came on the scene and was able to do wonders with real time searching. Breaking stories were found through this new phenomen of  "tweeting" and searching via hashtags (#) , so trending topics take higher rank in search results. The other big boys couldn't sit back and watch though...it was only a matter of time before they jumped in on the real time search results action.

Facebook now offers real time search as well. Facebook allows you to search through status updates, shared media, and pages you follow. It also offers a tabbed approach to look through different categories of search (similar to images, documents, etc on Google). Users also have the ability to share updates with "Everyone" instead of just friends. Could there be any potential in being able to search friends of friend's posts?  This would allow a much larger audience to be apart of the action, but who knows.

Google also has a new version that is testing now called Caffeine. It is supposed to be more real time search tool as well. Google's plan is to have Caffeine be faster, more accurate, and return more results.

Read more to find out some of the not so well known players that have jumped on the real time search bandwagon over the past few months.  There is a brief description of the service with a few of my notes from visiting/testing each of the search engines. "Charles Gibson" was the main search phrase used, as he was recently replaced by Diane Sawyer, so results are reflective of that search.

One of the more annoying memes of the past few years is the wave of blog articles in which the title follows the "Is _____ dead?" naming convention. These titles are meant to get us into such a tizzy that we just must click on the story so that we can get in there and give the author a piece of our minds in the comments section. Then we read the article and realize that it was mostly likely used in an ironic way, and that we took the bait hook, line and sinker.  Anyway, here is a very small sampling of particularly stupid titles.

The List

	Is Java Dead? Yeah, all those banks and hospitals finally saw the light, and they're finally rebuilding their mission critical systems with PHP.
	Is RSS Dead? I'm not a heavy RSS user, but for some reason I doubt this. RSS is a great way to feed data accross various sites.
	Is .NET Dead? Yeah, and so is Java.
	Is blogging dead? Ha.
	Is the internet dead? CNN, 1998! Excellent work, fellas.
	Is the Mobile Web Dead? Not bloody likely. It just learned to crawl, and pretty soon it's going to be running (your life).
	Is the iPod dead? Not too surprising. In a couple of years this title will be rather appropriate.
	Is Google Dead? This wack-job compares google to a hooker, then tries to get you to download some file called "ZIP2PROFIT". I don't suggest it.
	Is PHP dead? Yes, and half the internet disappeared with it.
	Is MySpace Dead? Ok, this guy gets a free pass!