Slashdot Mirror
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.
Within the next two years max. That spells trouble for Google and its shareholders, who still place a very high premium on what is quickly becoming a common service. Fortunately for Google insiders, they should be able to cash out long before the regular dopes in investorland figure this out.
It helped me track down a couple of old friends, even when all others had failed. To be fair, it was the last one that I had turned to - I'd even tried dogpile and lycos before that.
"How like you to drag your keyboard to a gun fight." - Aaron Bedard (BANE)
This is hardly fair as MSN search is in very early beta while Google and the rest have been around for several years
Well, I started to find Google exteremely furstrating now. Whenever I try to serach for documents/specifications/data sheets of a certain protocol or an idea that has a large commercial use, google would send you pages, and pages, and pages of products that matched these keywords. It's very obvious that companies are buying these keywords. Thus, they have higher priorities on our first few pages in the search results.
"Evil thrives when good men do nothing"
I only visited Jeeves for the easter eggs. Sadly, it seems that most of them are now gone.
Cheers,
Adolfo
It has nothing like one. Yahoo search, msn, altavista, dogpile, and many others exist and are used. Monopoly means something, and Google sure does not fit the definition of one.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Which of the companies -- MSN, Google, Yahoo!, and AskJeeves -- is willing to stand up to the Chinese barbarians and to refuse to censor any results from the search engine?
We know that Google is willing to succumb since it hires a large number of Chinese H-1B workers.
What a stupid post.
Internet advertising was commodidized years ago, and that's where Google makes most of it's revenue, one way or another, according to the financial papers I read.
The fact that Google has profit now, even after 99% of businesses in the mythical "internet sector" have gone belly up, is a testament to the fact that they probably know more than you do about this whole business thing.
It's been a long time.
How is that a problem? The problem is that the returned pages are pages i'm not looking for :-) If I'd go to yahoo and search for the same exact keywords, I'd get my documents from the first time! (I'm not suggesting the yahoo have better seraching algorithms)
"Evil thrives when good men do nothing"
This is the whole reason why Google has managed to survive.
(Assembled) computers, for example, are a commodity. Anyone can buy parts off Pricewatch, build them, and sell them. This doesn't stop companies from making money by doing it.
A better example would probably be Logitech. They make keyboards, mice, and speakers--certainly commodity items--and make money from selling them.
Same with Google. Anyone else can, and many other people do, provide relevance-engine searches, but Google does it better for cheaper than anyone else.
This is how capitalism is supposed to work. Google doesn't survive because they don't have relevant competition (like Microsoft), they survive because they can stand up to their competition (like Logitech).
And we all get better, cheaper stuff for it.
i always use http://www.jux2.com
it grabs results from google+yahoo+ask jeeves, and then ranks stuff according to how it appears in those. since there's only 35% overlap the results are usually better than using 1 engine alone.
These are the searches I made in order and nothing cut out except for the cases where a question didn't give anything on page 1 for either of the engines.
:-)
:-)
Who created Slashdot?
Ask Jeeves: CmdrTaco as #1 (correct answer)
Google: CmdrTaco as #4
Who designed Ford?
Ask Jeeves: Henry Ford Academy as #1 (HF is correct)
Google: Nothing about Henry Ford on first page
What wavelength is red?
Ask Jeeves: 622-780 nm from search result description of #1
Google: "about 650 nm" if you follow link and read on in the page of #1
Sometimes we see negative side effects from this question system...
Where can I download Nero?
Ask Jeeves: First links to download service that did indeed have Nero as a download, but versions from 2000. Ahead.de as #3
Google: Ahead.de as #2 (a completely unrelated site as #1)
I tried to refine...
Where can I download the latest version of Nero?
Ask Jeeves: Got confused, but finally got the proper link (official download page) as #8
Google: Nero 6.6.0.1 (correct!) at unofficial site as #1, official site as #2.
Do SCO have a case?
Ask Jeeves: Groklaw.net as #1
Google: NewsForge analysing article as #1 and other SCO related news articles.
When do Revenge of the Sith have its premiere?
Ask Jeeves: "has its worldwide premiere on May 19, 2005" according to search result description for #2.
Google: Nothing in search result descriptions, and nothing I could find by following a few search result links on page 1.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I would of liked to see a comparisation against the clusty search engine with those other search engines. I've found clusty to be very usefull with it's categorial search.
Although their "sponsored results" (taken from overture) tend to anoy me, as they look part of the search results.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
yahoo's now got 1 billion images.
where's the slashdot story on that?