My Jalis - Digital magazine about trends
Marseille edit
My Jalis - Digital magazine about trends My Jalis - Digital magazine about trends
Lifestyle magazine and events in Marseille : Xaphir, the new French search engine
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Xaphir, the new French search engine

In pursuit of Google...

05/16/2017

In France, the market of search engines is widely dominated by Google which holds more than 90% of market shares. It is followed by Bing and Yahoo! with respectively 4.1% and 2.1% of market shares. Google is in quasi-monopoly position and it is very difficult to compete it.

 At the end of last March, the French search engine Xaphir was displayed online after 8 years of research and development. Xaphir has the ambition to overshadow giant Google by settling down the world’s top 5 of the search engines before 2020.

The French search engine has relied on the originality by offering a way of functioning which is different from that of Google. In fact, when we make a request to Google, results are chosen by means of a relevancy algorithm as well as PageRank of pages. To recap, the latter classifies pages according to their popularity. Xaphir has decided to adopt a different approach.

To respect 3 watchwords including “impartiality, diversity and universality ", the new French search engine has decided not to take into account the popularity of pages and equate them. Xaphir founder considers that the Internet user can miss numerous information because of little diversified results. To illustrate these words, he talks about a "knowledge bubble" which prevents, for example, the Internet user "to see that Arsenal is not only a football club". In fact, both front pages of results for "Arsenal" request on Google concerning only the football club. That’s why Xaphir highlights its results which do not appear inevitably in the classic search engines.

 Xaphir also differed at the level of the request realization. You can seize one or several keywords. Once the results shown, you have the possibility of refining results by specifying your request. To do it, you have several choices. First of all, you can simply add new keywords in the bar of search. Then, you can indicate to Xaphir that a result interests you by clicking the green button below the latter. Therefore, it will be added to the search bar and the search engine will highlight more similar results to this one. Finally, you can indicate that a result does not suit you by clicking the red button. Xaphir will eliminate all the results of the same type.

The French search engine opts for the originality to the result display. The latter are not shown one after another. They are in the fact sheet form and are not hierarchical. Xaphir offers an interface asking the users to change their browsing habits.

If Xaphir would like to compete Google which is the indisputable leader with market shares superior to 90 % in France, some improvements must be made. Xaphir is too slow at the moment. It also has to take into account more pages to offer more results to the Internet users. At the moment, the number of indexed pages is still insufficient.

The French search engine has another long way to go if it wants to reach the objective that it has set out and created durably in the top 5 of the world search engines.

Xaphir shows again that France possesses a real potential in terms of digital innovations. Every year new innovations made in France brings a real success. As an example, Sensorwake, a start-up of Nantes, has obtained 2 rewards, one for an olfactory awakening and the other for a diffuser of essential oils to improve the sleep, in CES (Consumer Electronics Show) of Las Vegas. It is the biggest world high-tech lounge. French Tech has good years ahead!

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