BBC Magazine's Search-Engine Shootout

An anonymous reader writes "On BBC Online's excellent Magazine, there is a shootout between Google, MSN, Yahoo! and Ask Jeeves. Search tests were conducted on five criteria: an obscure fact; multiple meanings of "raleigh"; speed; and current time in Sydney. Yahoo! is the fastest of the lot. Google has the cleanest interface. MSN Search fared worst of all. Jeeves is the apparent winner for features like related search. (Author claims to be a Google nut.)" This may be the nicest thing anyone's ever said about Jeeves.

Comments

No Teoma =(

[mg2]

Granted Teoma is operated by AskJeeves, but it's hardly the same engine, but it's too bad that they left it out. I think it's one of the better searches out there -- it tops MSN's new search, easily.

Google - category sorting could help.

[Japong]

If I recall correctly, Google does a lot of its indexing and listings by how many web pages link to the page in question, the more popular the page, the closer it is to being first in relevance of a search.

I've found this to be quite troublesome when it comes to searches for information that instead give me commercial sites trying to sell things - "samsung 753df monitor review" gives me one actual review and then a couple of pages worth of links to sites that simply include user reviews.

Google really needs a better way to filter out these pages than having users type in "-consumer, -resale -'buy now!'".

Re:How long until relevance engines are commoditie

[FiReaNGeL]

Jeans are common things, and yet, people still buy Levis.

Brand recognition is key in any market. And dont think that when search engines become "common", they'll be better than Google. Running www.Google.com isnt in the reach of most... hardware costs, knowledge, etc.

Even Microsoft can't seem to catch up with them, and it's been many years Google is #1 in my book.

Speed

[Concerned Onlooker]

Perhaps someone can enlighten me as to why speed really matters in these cases. Can you really tell the difference between a .18 second return and a .97 second return once you account for varying connection speeds, internet traffic, etc? Is speed really a relevant criterion? Obviously I'm missing something.

Re:Speed

[Neo's Nemesis]

the speed is actually logged on from the time a request is made to the database software and when results are returned. internet lag is not counted. thats an external factor.

i have had google search results load up in minutes on a dialup when the time written for total search was 1 sec.

it actually matters how fast you return your results. the sooner the better. the difference is not considerable right now but when lots and lots of traffic clogs your server with requests (catastrophe or mars migration day), then you'll get the true picture.

measured time for speed is flawed

[pikine]

From TFA: Yahoo: 0.18 seconds. Google: 0.97 seconds. MSN: 0.92 seconds. Others not available.

I think the author got these numbers from the search page, where the time is shown along the number of search results. However, the meaning of this number is not well-defined. I don't think it's even guaranteed to be accurate.

(btw, I tried on Google for "raleigh" and I got 0.30 seconds. Yahoo gives me 0.12 seconds. Trying jumping around the search results page, Yahoo gives me about 0.25 seconds, and Google sometimes goes as high as 0.70 seconds. However, I must note that Yahoo doesn't let me jump over as many as +/- 5 pages, but Google lets me jump over +/- 10 pages.)

Re:Interface

[X]

Sadly, Yahoo!'s been promoting the heck out of searech.yahoo.com, but still you aren't aware of it. Who types in their search engine anyway? You just bookmark it, use the search box in firefox, or use a search toolbar in your browser.

You'd be well advised to keep Yahoo!'s engine in your arsenal. They actually have a number of nice features. There's the "Also try" stuff, but in particular their image search and product search is *way* better than the competition.

Re:How long until relevance engines are commoditie

[nchip]

If brands are irrelevant, howcome you are posting a link to wired on slashdot? Surely there are lots of other and even better web magazines and forums... just the names of sites escape my mind.

Can't believe they tested MSN Search...

[Jugalator]

I'd like to defend Microsoft this time... Their new search engine is barely through the "technical preview" (aka alpha in this case) stage and has been given limited resources as it's only available for beta testing purposes.

"The new competitor MSN has had teething problems and we should bear in mind this is a test mode."

Yeah, so why didn't you test the finished product? If they would've tested MSN Search, at least test search.msn.com and not beta.search.msn.com as they apparently have done. It's not interesting to me as a reader to see the performance of a search engine where very little fine tuning has been done. It's not like I'd use a search engine with little hardware resources causing more time-outs than succesful searches anyway, even if it would win in the test.

Re:How long until relevance engines are commoditie

[biglig2]

You're new around here, aren't you? Because, and I am saying this with a lot of love, Slashdot readers are not exactly the best example of the public's clothes buying habits.