Will there ever be a happy medium

[Deliguy]

As a local computer tech I get asked quite often about which search engine I use. I used to always say google as I have been an avid user of google since it's inception. For some reason I no longer have a good answer for that. However in the recent years I couldn't help but notice that my efforts in seo has changed my mind about which search engines I use and when.

Since I am always creating new websites and working on old ones it's easy to notice that among the three majors(google, msn, yahoo) they rank differently. Google prefers old well developed sites, Yahoo likes sites that are focused on one subject. MSN likes keyword rich sites that are updated often.

This, over time, has forced me to change my views on which search engines I actually use. Now when I want to find information on a relatively new topic such as political topics and recent events, I use msn because I tend to find better, more recent information, from all the new sites that have popped up out of the wood works from the event. When I need to find article style information about a wide topic I now use Yahoo because it tends to produce sites that are 100% dedicated torwards that topic(ie real estate in new hampshire). May I point out at this point that google sucks for these type of queries because it will usually put the big old sites that just happen put a little sniplet of worthless information or comment about the subject(s). I can't tell you how annoyed I am at finding amazon.com in the top ten on almost every single search I do on google. They are a good site but they aren't the world, and they rarely are what I'm wanting to find. On the other hand Google's great if I am in the researching mood. I definitely use google because it brings me the sites that have been proven to give me the best information(ie. if I'm looking for something about the civil war or that time I drank too much and caused a riot).

The way I see it is all three search engines have too many flaws to stick to just one. It's better to just use the advantages of each one when they are needed.

Whats your thoughts on this? Will there ever be a search engine that hits that happy medium target?

[brian.mark]

I doubt if any one search engine will ever give me exactly what I need for every search.

I find myself using the Yahoo Mindset (http://mindset.research.yahoo.com/) tool more often lately - mostly because it's cool.

I also enjoy clicking on the "Search Builder" button on MSN, then changing some of the settings on the "Result Ranking" tab.

The more of these features become available to the user (without being hidden like they are now) and the more they can automatically adjust themselves based on the query and what they've seen other people do the better the SERPs will become. But I still don't think any search engine is ever going to be perfect in every situation. People just want different things, even when they search for the exact same phrase.

Brian.

[ctabuk]

Ask Jeeves in the UK is the best by miles for Legal Stuff, Housing Acts etc - Good post, good subject matter.

[roam_dx]

Wow! Yahoo Mindset is just what I think search engines should start moving toward, instead of clubbing the whole internet in one big search...what're you looking for - products, information...i agree brian...very very cool and well implemented.

I think Yahoo is probably just begining to take itself seriously in the search market and realizing that if anyone can take on Google its them...

Interesting post Deliguy I just made one here

http://www.webproworld.com/viewtopic.php?t=52860



Yahoo and MSN gave me just what I wanted on the first page, while on Google, they seem to force you wade through a few useless pages of spam, somewhat related info and other junk before something really on topic comes up.

Looks like G's really run out of ideas on how to better their search. I mean, fundamentally better their search, other than gimmicks like related results in the center of the page, or wiki results showing on top above other results. They are now resorting to silly tactics like don't link, use rel=nofollow etc.

Just look at Yahoo Mindset, it's brilliant. At least someones trying something new that's geniunly useful for the searcher, even if they only send me 10% of my monthly traffic.

G also need to seriously look at picking the Adsense publishers with a little more discretion, I think it will cut down on half the internet spam.

In fact, I can't think of anything amazing Google has given the search industry since link factoring and page rank. That was a long long time ago...

All that said, Google's still ok as a search engine and does turn up good results, expecially if the query isn't very commercial, this is just an observation, when you search for something that makes them money, i think they become just a little bit evil ;)

[urknighterrent]

Which search engine I use depends on what I'm looking for, but which searc engine I reccomend these days is "it doesnt really matter, but I use yahoo. Just skip the first few pages of results because those tend to be full of spam."

[Deliguy]

wow
I have never heard of yahoo mindset before. I must say I am very impressed. In a way that kind of answers my question. I can't wait until yahoo develops on this idea. Perhaps they will encorporate the pictures, music, and video searches into it as well.

The only thing I really see this search missing is services. I think it should sway between shopping, research, and services.

[jaydilla]

The search engine I use depends on the information I need. If I'm looking for a news article or something thats like only a day or 2 old i use MSN as they update their index so fast. But if i'm needing to find something thats not too easy to find and may be very old i tend to go with google and try different search queries til i find it. But hey this is just my experience, not saying im right about even what im bablying about. Yahoo I use them because i like to watch the differnces on all 3 engines for the same search query. yahoo is closer to google relevancy than nmsn i think.

[Deliguy]

Looking at Yahoo Mindset I too think this is the way search engines will start progressing. After all you can already see msn starting to move this way as well. This will definitely be interesting on how it affects the seo industry. People will spend less time researching keywords and more time researching "surfer intent."

[bugmenot]

As a local computer tech I get asked quite often about which search engine I use. I used to always say google as I have been an avid user of google since it's inception. For some reason I no longer have a good answer for that. However in the recent years I couldn't help but notice that my efforts in seo has changed my mind about which search engines I use and when.

Since I am always creating new websites and working on old ones it's easy to notice that among the three majors(google, msn, yahoo) they rank differently. Google prefers old well developed sites, Yahoo likes sites that are focused on one subject. MSN likes keyword rich sites that are updated often.

This, over time, has forced me to change my views on which search engines I actually use. Now when I want to find information on a relatively new topic such as political topics and recent events, I use msn because I tend to find better, more recent information, from all the new sites that have popped up out of the wood works from the event. When I need to find article style information about a wide topic I now use Yahoo because it tends to produce sites that are 100% dedicated torwards that topic(ie real estate in new hampshire). May I point out at this point that google sucks for these type of queries because it will usually put the big old sites that just happen put a little sniplet of worthless information or comment about the subject(s). I can't tell you how annoyed I am at finding amazon.com in the top ten on almost every single search I do on google. They are a good site but they aren't the world, and they rarely are what I'm wanting to find. On the other hand Google's great if I am in the researching mood. I definitely use google because it brings me the sites that have been proven to give me the best information(ie. if I'm looking for something about the civil war or that time I drank too much and caused a riot).

The way I see it is all three search engines have too many flaws to stick to just one. It's better to just use the advantages of each one when they are needed.

Whats your thoughts on this? Will there ever be a search engine that hits that happy medium target?

I use http://clusty.com/, seems to be spam free..... so far/

[artemist]

I thought that http://www.mamma.com Mamma knows all. Is the only search engine anyone uses.
Who is Google and what is Yahoo except an extension of BT? Bill Gates must be shrivelling in his cradle as his top SE people get kidnapped to work with mamma. [/url]

[newsblaze]

i used to use Google exclusively, but they've dug themselves into a hole and now they are trying to get out, but not doing a good job of it.

It used to be that you could search for a site and find what you wanted and if you searched again a few months later, you could still find the site you were looking for (but forgot to bookmark)

Now, their index changes so rapidly you can'y rely on it to find what you want. Also, it seems that vey few new sites can be found. I can understand them wanting to stop the SE spammers from gaining too much, but they will just hold on until their sites are old enough for google to pick them up.

My SE traffic used to be 90% from google, now it is about 40%. MSN sends me a reasonable amount too, almost an much ass Yahoo.

Like everyone else, I use a combination of engines and I've tried some new ones. Some of those are weak, but improving.

For News, Google News is definitely the best, but the google blog search is garbage right now.

[chipkonrad]

I agree with Deliguy about his findings. It's no longer possible to use one search engine any more. I have found so many spam sites in the top Google results, that I rarely use them any more. It seems that if a site has been around for a long time and has lots of links, you can get to the top of the SERPS on Google for just about anything you mention on the page.

My site is only 8 months old, but I get 40% of my traffic from MSN, and only 10% from Google. Why is G penalizing me when I have the best site on my topic? I'm referring only to www.AmishGourds.com.

[jaydilla]

yeh i had a site that was cloaking http://dnaids.com/hiv was the url, and linking to my site . I told msn of the problem but they sent me back some garbled automated response

[se-survivor]

I kinda like the way this guy combines categories like Vivisimo and then adds thumbnails of the sites so I can ID the link farms.

http://beta.previewseek.com/

I gave up a long time ago on Google when MSN indexed my Google sitemap in 3 days and Google refuses to drop the dead pages without 302s. Google's a piece of crap lately.

[brian.mark]

I kinda like the way this guy combines categories like Vivisimo and then adds thumbnails of the sites so I can ID the link farms.

http://beta.previewseek.com/

I gave up a long time ago on Google when MSN indexed my Google sitemap in 3 days and Google refuses to drop the dead pages without 302s. Google's a piece of crap lately.

Wow... what I like about that engine is that I'm #1 for just about everything, taking up the top 10+ results (as many as the top 107 results out of 57M from my quick testing) for many, many of our best converting queries. I can't say that's necessarily the best user experience, but it makes it seem like we're the only one selling the stuff. :-)

Brian.

[ctabuk]

I doubt if any one search engine will ever give me exactly what I need for every search.

I find myself using the Yahoo Mindset (http://mindset.research.yahoo.com/) tool more often lately - mostly because it's cool.

I also enjoy clicking on the "Search Builder" button on MSN, then changing some of the settings on the "Result Ranking" tab.

The more of these features become available to the user (without being hidden like they are now) and the more they can automatically adjust themselves based on the query and what they've seen other people do the better the SERPs will become. But I still don't think any search engine is ever going to be perfect in every situation. People just want different things, even when they search for the exact same phrase.

Brian.

Thanks Brian, I am delighted with my results, yipee

[se-survivor]

Wow... what I like about that engine is that I'm #1 for just about everything, taking up the top 10+ results (as many as the top 107 results out of 57M from my quick testing) for many, many of our best converting queries. I can't say that's necessarily the best user experience, but it makes it seem like we're the only one selling the stuff. :-)

Yup just goes to show how the internet would have been a much better place had search engines offered the olive branch to SEOs early on and told the world, "use these guys to optimize your websites by our guidelines. We encourage you to do it since we're really just an algorithm and we desperately need human intervention on a massive scale."

By alienating the SEO community, all they did was grow an industry of black hat site scrapers and link farmers, where once well optimized websites could have occupied the top slots.

Actually, in retrospect, all they really had to do was create 2 distinct seperate internets. One for commercial and one for fact finding...and let the SEOs handle the commercial. Then none of this confusion would have happened.

[ADAM Web Design]

As others have mentioned, it really depends. And I'm unlike most users in that I really don't use SEs that much anymore per se.

For technical information related to an error/hex code: Google. No-brainer here. If there's a hex code I can get my hands on, someone has documented the error associated with it and how to solve it.

Commercial needs: I tend to use directory sites more (http://listingsca.com , http://www.looksmart.com , http://www.joeant.com) because of the human factor and relative inability for people to mess with the results.

In case someone asks, I don't use DMOZ because 1) I never find what I want and 2) too many editors looking out for their own self-interests.

Personal stuff: I only ever use a few sites frequently (including this one), so I'm rarely looking up stuff online. It's usually a mixture then, between Google and MSN.

[khurramali]

Every Search Engine is different, specializes in different subjects, depends what you are looking for.

Search Engines are mushrooming all over the internet and the trend will keep growing as ninche markets develop and new services are needed which the current search engines can't fulfill, provide.

[InteMarket]

... because I believe Google's search results are pretty poor in many areas, for to primary reasons:

1. The "Sandbox" represses relevant sites with new information.

2. Google allows adsense sites to spam its search results.

The results for the term "California State University, San Jose" (now called "San Jose State") provide a good example of this. There are pages on http://www.gostate.org devoted entirely to this subject. Yahoo & MSN rank these pages well, but they are nowhere to be found on Google.