From The Power of Defaults by Jakob Nielson:

Users click the top hit not because it's any better, but simply because it's first. This might be due to sheer laziness (after all, you start from the top) or because users assume the search engine places the best hit on top, whether that's actually true or not.

I wrote a long time ago about how as the online population grows, organizing and finding information is going to become more and more difficult. Scalability is key here and gives another good argument towards SMALL IS THE NEW BIG. Niche search. That's where we will start to find the information we need.

I love what degenerate does with tagging and the niche blog market (although not as niche anymore). I watched Technorati's Ryan King discuss the microformats they are developing. Some of these will actually help advanced users 'vote' for good links, raising them higher up. As per Ryan's comments below, links are already an auto-vote, microformatting actually developed a tag that withholds that vote...I guess sort of like a 'nofollow'. [comment: why couldn't we vote "for" entries when we link to them? I know SPAM is an issue, but I'm all for killing spam at it's source rather than raining on our parade. If only we could link the del.icio.us stuff to Technorati...hmmmm...there's a mashup] .

Tags, unlike general text searches, are pretty specific in regards to discerning the 'meaning' of a page, and you don't have to rely on the end user to determine it for you.

Only problem I foresee are the SEOs coming in here and finding a way to muck everything up again. Sorry, but I believe that SEM/SEO is a big contributor to the current search engine failings. It's spam for search engines (post spam next).

What do search engines do? Well, they help people find stuff, or at least they are supposed to. What stuff are people looking for? relevant stuff - their stuff, their friends' stuff, stuff they want to buy, other people, their photos, mentions of them online, information stuff, news stuff...etc. What has happened to search? Well, instead of going to find stuff, there is a barrage of stuff looking for us. Sometimes we can't tell the difference between the good stuff and the spam stuff, so we rely on paradigms that we think we can trust...namely high-up search results. When those results fool us, we lose twice. Once for not finding the stuff we need to find and once for voting for the link that led us astray.

That sucks.

What's really great, though, is it feels as if Web 2.0 is all about working with the niche areas to improve the user experience...for free! [I swear, all of these young guys working on these projects I meet must be independently wealthy or something. I know I can't afford to work for free. I can barely afford to work for pay.] Either way, their passion lies in the pursuit of creating new ways to find information in various niches. Sorry guys, but here is hoping you never get too big...

Here is a short list off the top of my head:

Technorati
Del.icio.us
Tailrank
SearchFox

But you'll find way more at TechCrunch. Michael specializes in reporting on these vigilantes.

[ps. if I missed any that are glaringly obvious, kick me in the pants in the comments below]

[Power of Defaults found via OneDegree, Scobleizer, ScriptingNews, Memeorandum]