Search Engine Battle!

[Genocidicbunny]

Which you then very much contradicted by saying that the default is as good as the rest, which then presents no reason to switch ( you essentially waste effort switching then, because you'd get the same quality of results either way )

 

[Zelig]

Which you then very much contradicted by saying that the default is as good as the rest, which then presents no reason to switch ( you essentially waste effort switching then, because you'd get the same quality of results either way )

I didn't say the default was as good, I said it was functional.

I clearly implied that the best search engine might not be the default.

Was the meaning in my posts really that hard to decipher, or do you just like picking at them?

 

[Maniacal]

I only use google, I almost alwyas find what I am looking for anyways and I doubt another engine would find anything I do not find any better. I gave up on image searches a long time ago, since a description of the image I want is not likely to be the name of the damn thing.

 

[Modeltrainman]

I really like Bing, it has great results. All I used to use was LiveSearch, so I've been using Bing since it came out. It's familiar.

 

[wolfigor]

Sometimes the search engine results, but mostly our perception of them are influenced by the timing of search and our "mood" at the time.

the best way to evaluate a search in personal way is to run the same search on multiple search engines at the same time and not see what is the name of the search engine.
http://blindsearch.fejus.com/
does exactly this.
It performs a search on google, bing, and yahoo at the same time.
It shows all results in parallel (on 3 coloumns) without showing from which of the 3 engines they come.
You get to know it only when you "vote" which search best fit what you really were looking for

 

[wolfigor]

For example I used http://blindsearch.fejus.com/ to search for "opera oslo".
It's a tricky question because there is browser company (Opera) based in Oslo together with a very modern and beautiful Opera House building.
With "opera oslo" I may have searched for:
1. the browser company Opera in Oslo
2. about the opera in Oslo (looking for exhibitions)
3. about the architecture of the building itself

The results for Bing:
1. http://www.operaen.no
official site of the Opera House company, where you can see their program and buy tickets
2. http://www.oslooperahouse.com/
official site of the Opera House (building)
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_National_Opera_House_(Oslo)
wikipedia page
then you get 3 results from architecture websites.
at the end 1 link to expedia (for hotels near the Opera House in Oslo)
Last link is for a 1 year old newpaper article about a concert.

lets see Google
1. http://www.operaen.no
official site of the Opera House company, where you can see their program and buy tickets
2. http://www.operaen.no/Default.aspx?ID=934
the same as #1!!! (but in english instead of Norwegian)
3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oslo_Opera_House
wikipedia
4. http://www.oslooperahouse.com/
official site of the Opera House (building)
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWSJtBzK9qE
YouTibe belongs to Google... that's why is the only one linking it
at the end 3 links to website for booking hotels (incidentally all for the same hotel, and a rather crappy one to my taste, but rather near to the building itself)

Finally Yahoo is the most diverse...
1. http://www.oslooperahouse.com/
Official website of the Opera House (building)
2. http://www.arcspace.com/architects/snoehetta/oslo_opera/oslo_opera.html
architecture website
3. hotel booking website (the same hotel as google)
4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_National_Opera_House_(Oslo)
followed by 3 links to hotel booking (again the same hotel btw)
and at the end a link to a rather old news article about the cost of building the building


All 3 fail to find Opera the browser company (that would have appeared multiple times if you searched "opera" without the word "oslo" next to it.


You can choose by yourself which search engine was the best in this case.
Probably if you are not living in Oslo and just looking for a trip there from USA maybe Yahoo is good... but for my taste is a bit too commercial oriented.

Google and Bing are pretty much the same, but Google waste the list with a double link to the same page.


Obviously this is just one experiment, more search are needed to decide which search engine is best for you.
But you can try yourself

 

[Mise]

No-one who wanted to search for the browse company would type "oslo" though -- they would type "Opera browser" or if they wanted the company itself, "opera browser company oslo". I think all search engines there performed well, and did exactly what I want them to do when I search for "opera oslo" -- which is to list opera houses in Oslo!

I used that blind search too for a bit, and found Yahoo to be slightly better than the others. But they all gave basically the same results.......

 

[wolfigor]

No-one who wanted to search for the browse company would type "oslo" though -- they would type "Opera browser"

Yes, that's pretty clear (at least for me and you) and I mentioned it.

I used that blind search too for a bit, and found Yahoo to be slightly better than the others. But they all gave basically the same results.......

It's true that all give mostly the same results, at least for the first 3-4 positions.
When you look at the next results their relevance tend to fall pretty quickly.

What surprised me is the results for hotels.
All 3 search engines propose hotels, but only Bing links to expedia listing all hotels near the Opera House (all in 5-10 minutes walk distance).
Yahoo and Google instead have multiple links to the same hotel, not very useful isn't it?
(again we may say that if you were interested in hotels, you would have added the word "hotel" to the search)

 

[Inca]

Sorry for bumping this but I like the topic for another reason than those that have been mentioned.

It's not just about the search itself. It's about abuse as well. One of the reasons why Google is the market leader is that the Google programmers still tend to keep the main search pages rather clean from nasty scripts. "Google Books" is another case though - not clean. Yahoo is notoriously dirty and always has been - full of nasty scripts that run in the background and try to install malware. OTOH Microsoft tends to usurp the world - they always have some kind of hidden strategy aimed at controlling everything and everybody. I don't like the idea of Microsoft taking over Yahoo - the marriage of the nasty with the dirty - much like it was with Adobe taking over Macromedia. Google has been criticized for having too much market power as well but as yet they have not had the tendency to abuse their power as badly as Microsoft do. Also Google's search pages are much cleaner than any Pages at Ebay. Ebay has nasty scripts all over the place - and they have become even nastier during the last year or so.

If Google continues to keep the search pages pretty much clean of intrusive scripts I would prefer Google over many of the others anytime. I always do the advanced search - often using the OR function as in the following example (hope the forum Engine doesn't screw this up): "Zeitgeist movie" "http://rapidshare" OR "www.megaupload" OR "http://depositfiles" OR "www.hotfile" etc.... I often put certain expressions into quotation marks to avoid expressions getting split up into single words. When using the OR function a lot you also need the quotation marks. (Please note - the sharewaresites in the example are not entirely clean either - some will only work with proxies also)

In some rare cases where Google really doesn't find stuff I use Metager - a search Engine powered by the University of Hanover in Germany. Metager is a Metacrawler and they also have a lot of advanced options If you set your browser to tell webpages that your preferred language is English then Metager will appear in English.