The underdog of search engines bites back

Planit Agency
July 24, 2012

Sick of the Googlopoly? Lycos now kicks ass… yes LYCOS.   Apparently an old dog can learn new tricks. When you go to Lycos.com you will notice a complete overhaul. You will be treated to a fresh, new, sleek design that is very reminiscent of the increasingly familiar look and feel of widgets/apps.   the new look The new look.   Visitors are treated to instant views of basic things you'd most likely be looking for right off the bat, with a real-time feed of weather, news, entertainment, etc. All this without having to do any sort of login (unlike iGoogle). Anyone with a Windows smart phone will also notice similarities—it bears quite a resemblance to that OS as well as the upcoming Windows 8.   Even the Xbox 360 dashboard has recently had an update to look nearly identical.   A preview of Windows 8 A preview of Windows 8, or is that a Windows Phone? No wait—is that an Xbox 360?   The pleasing aesthetic and smart functionality are even more apparent when compared to other leading search engines.   default Google Default Google, rather bland huh?   MS search aka Bing MS search, aka Bing: Admittedly the daily backgrounds are nice, but it's still essentially just a search field.   Yahoo! for clutter! Yahoo! for clutter? Way too much going on here—and it just keeps going and going (this is only half of the screenshot).   As of this writing, Lycos is currently ranked seventh out of the top 15 search engines with 4,300,000 Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors, trailing behind the aforementioned engines. Google clearly dominates at #1 with 900,000,000 Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors, Bing and Yahoo! are next up, nearly tied at second and third place with 165,000,000 and 160,000,000 Estimated Unique Monthly Visitors, respectively. Ask, AOL, and MyWebSearch fill in the gap with Excite, Altavista, and others finishing out the rest. Results taken from http://www.ebizmba.com/articles/search-engines. Follow the link for complete details.   In an online search world that's been relegated mainly to Google, Yahoo!, and Bing, it's refreshing to see this, ahem, underdog make a comeback.   The changes at Lycos.com may be prompted not only by recent trends but also the fact they've been merged, re-organized, and bought out since the early 2000s. In an article from August 16, 2010: "One of the poster children for the Internet boom of the mid-1990s, Lycos, Inc. today was sold for $36 million. In 2001, the Waltham-based search engine and web tools company merged with Spanish telecom company Telefonica for $5.4 billion. Lycos’ most recent owner, Daum Corp. of Korea, sold the firm to Ybrant Digital of India, a provider of digital marketing solutions."   From doing some quick research it appears that Lycos has had a steady stream of relaunches targeted to specific areas since 2009. So, while this may be old news to some, I'm sure there are plenty of people out there (like me) who are just now rediscovering Lycos.