Google Relevance
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The Google Ballyhoo – Yahoo and MSN relevance.
The Google ballyhoo, as I would like to call it, has created a somewhat deceptive illusion that Google is the most relevant search engine. It is true, that at one point in time, Google was the best search engine, providing quality, fast and honest results. However, several changes in algorithm, the realization of the power of search, and the ‘Google Currency’ (see my previous blog) have, in my honest opinion, changed Google for the worst. This however, is not to discount the efforts of Yahoo and Live (MSN), I believe that these search engines, particularly Live, have been quietly, yet quickly learning from their competitor, and, as such have caught up, and arguably overtaken Google in search result relevancy.
The early 2000’s witnessed a vast vacuum of search engine competition with Google searing ahead on its patented search engine algorithm, leaving Yahoo and MSN scratching their heads over what went wrong. However, as I pointed out in my previous blog, the virtual ‘Google Currency’ that has become particularly powerful and expensive today has served as the largest incentive to vary search algorithms and prevent quality websites from reaching respectable results.
Let me elaborate by considering an analogy. You bake cookies to help the homeless, your cookies are so good that the homeless love your cookies and recommend them highly. All of a sudden, your cookies are a great hit, and the line to get your cookies is enormous (no, this is not a lifted plot from ‘Small Time Crooks’, bear with me). In fact, the line to get cookies from you for free is so large, that you are not coping with the demand, so, in order to manage the demand, you start charging 50c for your cookies. Sure this is a reasonable price to pay for quality. Great thinking! The implementation of a fundamental law of economics has helped you mange your demand. But wait….the amount of people wanting your cookies is still increasing, so what do you do? Raise the price again and expand, open shops, go public, create a brand. You now manage a large factory producing cookies, and you no longer make the cookies yourself, instead, the cookies are made by machines and people you hired to oversee the project.
Now folks, the point of this rather extended comparison of Google to a cookie factory is to illustrate that the Google industry has become a crumbling cookie. The vast demand for search relevancy has meant that Google introduced Adwords to help advertisers achieve results quickly, but an even higher demand for the Adwords Google Currency, meant that the key-word auction system was invented. The outcome of these steps resulted in an exponential growth of the company. The creation of a virtual ‘factory’ leads to inflated prices for search terms, loss of quality control, sacrifice of morals, and the deprivation of the poor (search engine users) from delicious, free search engine results. This phenomenon has caused many to revert back to their old search engines, and this, may not be a bad thing…
Lets compare the natural search engine outcomes for a keyword phrase like ‘sydney seo’. To make life easier, I will look at the first result on Google for each of the three top search engines: Google comes up with pilkster.com/ a general portal website, with no relevant data in the title or description, but a page rank of 5. In fact, the term ‘sydney seo’ does not even show on the landing page of the search! Yahoo, comes up with a slightly better result by showing www.seosydney.com.au/contact_seo_sydney.html as its first result. This is also a rather bad outcome, as it is the contact page, and does not have much content that would deem it worthy of a top search engine result. Live, on the other hand, seems to be the only one which provided a good and justifiable first search engine result of www.sydneyseo.com.au . The respective URL outcomes for 21st May 2007 for each search engine are give here, they may change by the time you view them the seo&btnG=Search&meta=," target="_blank">Google result, the seo&ei=UTF-8&fr=yfp-t-501&fp_ip=AU&x=wrt&meta=0" target="_blank">Yahoo result , the seo&go.x=0&go.y=0&form=QBRE" target="_blank">Live result .
As I have suggested in my previous blog, I believe that Live is the best and most relevant search engine for images. I find the rollovers to be very useful and aesthetically pleasing. I am now of the opinion that Live is producing more relevant search engine results than Google or Yahoo. Perhaps, this will change, perhaps when the tide of searchers return their loyalties to Live, Yahoo and others, Google will be forced to re consider its search policy. Until then, I encourage everyone to give Live a chance.
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