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.
I find it highly suspicious that Incredifind and Lycos Sidesearch were left out. I mean, c'mon, search "helpers" that install themselves automatically and lead me to fascinating products I never knew I needed deserve some mention, right???
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)
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!'".
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.
Eureka Science News - automatically updated
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.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
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.)
I once had a signature.
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"
If somebody involved with this story can't count to five, how seriously should we consider it?
Sponsored by SILA -- Search for Intelligent Life in AmericaThe three most important words in a relationship are "I love you." The two most important are "Humor me."
I think you may be confusing Yahoo! the web portal with Yahoo! the search engine.. As you can see, Yahoo!'s search page is as clean if not cleaner than Google's.
Support the First Amendment. Read at -1
Wired recently had an article recently about how brand names along just aren't cutting it any more.
Consumers are wising up the quality is more important than name.
I think Google is already in trouble.
I didn't need a team of British reporters and weeks of research, I just typed "Who has the fastest search engine" into the search engines. Duh! And the results are...
Google says "AlltheWeb"
Yahoo says "Ixquick"
MSN says "Ixquick"
Jeeves says "AlltheWeb"
To break the tie I asked the winners:
Ixquick said "AlltheWeb"
AlltheWeb said "Ixquick"
So there you have it: A tie.
Those snobby brits... Any tenuous connection to their fading culture and they're all over it!
On a completely relevant note, I have a whole playlist of P G Wodehouse audiobooks on my iPod.
Inspired, I'm going to start my own search engine called AskWooster. It will search for send its agents, called Gussie Finknottle, Tuppy Glossup and Bingo Little, out to seek for interesting stuff and return 3 cats, a fish and a size 14 top hat.
Whoosh...! The sound of all this going completely over the heads of the /. crowd.
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!
Want to find an evil corporation?
How about a monopolist?
Or, for something a little different, the greatest threat to innovation in our world?
All straight from the horse's mouth. (-:
Got time? Spend some of it coding or testing