Google Not Best for All Searches - Getting Specific
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So we’ve seen a hint here that Google doesn’t deliver the most relevant results for all types of searches. And it’s possible that some vertical search engines may not be much better – or at least that they don’t deliver the kind of experience you can get from some of the general search engines. So where do you go for specific kinds of queries?
I don’t have a scientific study that can answer that question. If anyone knows of such a study, please let me know in the comments to this article; I’d love to see the results. The best thing I can offer is a blog post from SEO-Space in which a few searchers – folks around their office, family and friends – were asked to perform certain types of searches in the four major search engines (Google, Yahoo, Windows Live, and Ask) and rate them based on how well they like the results they received.
The sample size could not have been large enough for statistical purposes, to say nothing of the lack of demographics information. Even so, everyone did the same kinds of searches in the same four search engines, so there was at least some scientific method involved. Regardless, the results were suggestive: Google was the number one search engine with everyone only for searches on a general topic of interest. For at least one type of search, in fact – searching for a branded product of interest – Google scored dead last, delivering only news stories for such items as a Toyota Tacoma or an Apple iPhone.
The participants in the “study” performed six different types of searches:
- A general product search (for such items as a digital camera or mobile phone).
- A specific product search (for branded products like Toshiba laptops).
- An entertainment search, which involved finding information on movie releases, band tour dates, and the like.
- A search for a famous person such as an actor, athlete or musician.
- A search for a particular destination, in this case a city.
- A general topic of interest, such as apple pie recipes.
So if Google didn’t come out on top in most of those searches, which search engine did? Believe it or not, it was Ask. The volunteers chose Ask as giving the best results in four out of the six types of searches performed. The participants seemed to appreciate the comprehensiveness of Ask’s results. For at least one of the search types, they did not like the fact that Wikipedia listings were displayed near the top of Google’s results.
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