Greg Notess said something that caught my interest about searchers using more than one search engine. He told a story about how he had an email address but wanted to know the name of the person to whom it belonged. He tried some of those other search engines but got no results. Then he tried Yahoo! and boom, there it was. We’d indexed a comment that the person had made somewhere, and the person had included their name along with their email address, so Notess got the info he needed.
Why is this interesting?
1. Do professional searchers really know that they need to use more than one engine? Really? REALLY? If so…
2. This was the closest I heard any of the speakers get to evaluating core relevancy. I know this particular anecdote was in Yahoo’s favor, but I realize it could just as easily have gone to MSN, Ask or Google. (The other thing Notess did mention was that he thinks MSN’s results are the freshest right now. He didn’t provide any examples.)
In a session on Wednesday, Steven Cohen commented that he thinks Yahoo is better at general search than Google right now, relevancy-wise. Then, while showing off a search toy (http://www.twingine.com/), he ran a search where Yahoo did, indeed, perform notably better. (He also pointed out the categories, and bemoaned the fact that Google has dropped them.) I think we’ve all gotten pretty complacent about our perception of Google as the “best” search tool. It was a useful reminder that there is more out there, one that I am sad to admit that I needed.
It was great to see you!
Wow, thanks for letting me know about this. I really wish I had seen that presentation. I’m very glad to know that someone actually compared search results and discussed relevancy.
thanks!