By Mike Myatt, Chief Strategy Officer, N2growth
Just think about how many times a week you search for something on the Internet 10, 20, 50, 100+ times? Reflect back upon any major business decision you’ve made over the last few years and my guess is that you utilized the Internet at some point in time to verify, analyze, research, confirm, compare, or evaluate something in regard to every one of those major decisions. The bottom line is that the key to your Internet experience begins with the search engine you choose to use. It is therefore important to understand which search engine will provide you with the best results and in turn the largest boost in productivity.
The analysis of search engines that follows will be much more practical than technical. It will focus on the needs of business owners and executives in terms of which search engines deliver the best search results and not who has the best entertainment sections, coolest consumer applications or provides the best advertising platform. That being said I believe you will find it enlightening and something that you can put to use immediately.
With more than 2000 (and growing) search engines available on the Internet there is no shortage of search options to choose from. If you’re like most people I know you’ve selected a search engine of preference, but my question is this Was your selection based on any real research or was it a selection by default? Have you been sucked in by marketing hype or just fallen prey to a comfort zone of searching the same way that you always have?
Let’s take a look at the major search engines: Google, Yahoo, MSN, Netscape, AOL, Lycos, Ask.com, Alltheweb, Mamma, Dogpile and Open Directory. My guess is that most readers use one of these as their search engine of preference. When you look at the above referenced list I’m sure that your bias comes right to the surface with thoughts like Yahoo and MSN are consumer search engines vs. Google that is a true commercial search engine, or how can smaller search engines like Ask.com or Lycos compare with Google or Yahoo or finally for search snobs, why would I ever want to put up with the advertising and clutter of AOL or Yahoo when I can use Mamma, Dogpile or Open Directory?
While one can make arguments both for and against any of the aforementioned positions, in my opinion it all comes down to results and usability. As with most business people I know I was a die-hard Google fan for years. However along with a growing amount of professionals I have changed my opinion of late. In the text that follows I’ll tell you why, and back it up with solid logic.
For the sake of brevity I’m going to narrow my analysis to what I believe are the four search engines most often used by C-suite executives and entrepreneurs; Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com. Furthermore I will limit the analysis to an examination of the following four areas:
1. Returned Searches: If you open up four separate browser windows and type in the same term into the search box of each of the four search engines and compare the results you’ll find that Google will often times return two to three times the number of search results as do the other three search eninges. Yahoo will typically rank second with MSN and Ask.com returning approximately the same number of results. This is a pure quantitative analysis measuring only the volume of results that match your query. It has nothing to do with things like relevance or timeliness. However if you’re looking for sheer girth, Google is the clear winner.
2. Usability and Functionality: How easy is the search engine to navigate and what tools are provided to make your searches more productive? Ask.com is the clear winner here Not even close are any of the other search engines. The site is simple and uncluttered, but loaded with productivity tools to help you search more effectively. You can mouse over an icon and get a visual preview of a site before you go there, and there are numerous options to either narrow or expand your search. With each subsequent drill-down you can continue to expand and refine your search parameters with an intuitive search agent that anticipates your needs as a user. I would strongly suggest if you are not using Ask.com that you give it a test drive to see what I’m talking about here Brilliant!
3. Relevant Searches: Are you looking for quality, quantity or both? How many of you will actually go more than a page or two deep into the returned search results anyway? If you’re like me you want the most relevant and current information possible. MSN probably provides the most currently updated information of all the major search engines updating daily. Therefore if you’re looking for the most current content MSN wins hands down. However Yahoo and Ask.com follow MSN so closely that the difference is negligible. The odd engine out here is Google. One of the reasons that they dominate in the quantity of returned searches is that many of Google’s returned searches are not relevant. It is not uncommon to see returned searches in the top 10 results on Google that are 5 to 10 years old. I find this personally annoying and most often useless. If I want to search for dated information I use parameters to accomplish this, but I don’t want outdated information in my general searches.
4. Popularity: In my opinion while this parameter is worthy of note, it is only really beneficial if you are an advertiser and doesn’t bear tremendous weight in terms of search relevance. That being said if you’re choosing a search engine based upon popularity Yahoo, Google and MSN rank 1, 2 and 3 respectively out of all the sites on the Internet in terms of popularity. While Ask.com ranks in the top 500 at 127 it is clearly a lesser known brand, but a good indicator of its improving popularity is that it has climbed 35 spots in the last 3 months alone.
OK, so what are you supposed to conclude from all this hyperbole? First that I have abandoned Google for Ask.com I know this must sound like heresy to some but I am not alone. Many of my peers and colleagues have drawn similar conclusions and have left Google as well. Google is so focused on conquering the world (generally something I’m in favor of) that it has taken its eye off of search. If I want to use Google Earth I’ll go there for that particular application, but if good solid search tools and relevance are driving my decisioning Google has lost my business.
In this author’s opinion Ask.com is best in class, followed by MSN, Yahoo and Google has fallen in the cellar. Ask.com is growing its business by focusing on the competency of search while Google is growing its business at the expense of search. Both models work, but when I’m looking for search productivity Ask.com is the clear winner.
