Answers.com Takes New, Old Approach to Search - How Does Google Do?
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I was probably hoping for too much, I have to say. It may be churlish of me to feel dissatisfied with these results, but rather than needing to dig I was hoping for a simple list with the brave ladies’ names. Ideally, I would have loved to see a bulleted list with a quick paragraph or two about each one. So I have to see what Google will do with this query.
I even tried to make it fair by putting exactly the same question into the search box. That first link took me to a page that gave me almost exactly what I was looking for. It featured a paragraph or two on King Henry VIII, and then a paragraph on each of his wives, in order. It even included thumbnail portraits.
I honestly didn’t think my question was particularly difficult or obscure, especially for a reference site like Answers.com. I didn’t expect Google to outperform it on a natural language question. Either Google’s engineers are taking natural language search a lot more seriously than they’ve been given credit for, or Answers.com still needs some work. Or, as a third option, I’m asking the wrong kinds of questions to really bring out the differences in performance. Fortunately, I could put that point to the test easily enough.
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