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BBC Magazine's Search-Engine Shootout

Posted by timothy on from the asanine-suggestions-from-jeeves-the-idiot-butler dept.

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.

2 of 187 comments (clear)

  1. Google - category sorting could help. by Japong · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!'".

  2. Re:How long until relevance engines are commoditie by spoonist · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.