Google Blogoscoped

Wednesday, November 26, 2003

Brief Search Engine Comparison

Lately, a lot of people say Google’s broken. Here I present another search engine comparison to see if Google’s still the best.

For my (non-scientific, non-representative) test, I will try to locate a target page with a set of keywords. If the page is in the first result list of the search engine, the search engine scores 1 point.

DescriptionURLKeywordsGoogleAlta VistaAllThe WebAsk JeevesMSN
A recent CNN headline about Dell canceling Indian support.edition.cnn.com/ 2003/TECH/biztech/11/24/ dell.call.centers.ap/index.htmlDell cancels Indian Support CNN10001
The Davezilla-Blog homepage.www.davezilla.comdavezilla01111
The weblog by Jerz.jerz.setonhill.edu/ weblog/index.jspJerz weblog10111
A German TV station. I enter the name of the channel and “TV”www.ard.deARD fernsehen10111
One of my own sites, the “Kuching Quick Guide”.kuching.outer-court.comkuching quick guide11011
A German tech news site; the Heise news.www.heise.deHeise Nachrichten10001
A well-organized browser download page.browsers.evolt.orgEvolt Browsers Download11111
An SVG drawing tool by JASC Software.www.jasc.com/ products/webdraw/ or www.jasc.com/ webdraw.aspJasc WebDraw11111
Another software package, this time an FTP-client.www.vandyke.com/ download/absoluteftp or www.vandyke.com/ download/absoluteftp/ 1.9.6/index.htmlAbsoluteFTP download11111
Result:85679

As you can see from this very brief test, MSN scores the best result, Google comes in second, and Altavista last.

Also see Search Engines Put to the Test.

Barry Lloyd Analyzing Google "Florida" Update

[Florida]

“Starting on the 16th of November, a major shift in results was seen on Google. (...)
Google appeared to be doing a major update, not seen for many months, as reported first on WebMasterWorld who named it “Florida”, continuing the tradition of naming updates rather like hurricanes. In this case it was a hurricane! (...)

It appeared (...) that some sort of over-SEOd filter had been applied to check if overt SEO had been done for that particular phrase. It was as if Google were checking to see if external links to the site included the phrase, on-page optimisation was being done for the phrase and even if the domain included the phrase. If the density of the optimisation, both on and off the page, appeared too artificial, then a filter was tripped and down went the page – solely for that phrase. (...)

Google are trying to redress the balance by trying to eradicate obvious search engine manipulation from their most competitive results. (...)

[The] days of easy rankings through simple SEO are over.”
– Barry Lloyd, Been Gazumped by Google? Trying to make Sense of the “Florida” Update!, 2003-11-25

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