Whatever Happened To Google Search?
MSN search has given me better results lately.
"Weiqi, try google 'IIOP.NET' and 'TAO'." Dan shouted at me as I entered OCI North one day last week. (Or was it this Monday? I don't remember exactly.)
I knew why. I did a live blog of one of Dan's talks about IIOP.NET and TAO a few days earlier.
So I sat down and did the search. As I expected, the blog showed up on the first screenful of results. It ranked the fifth or sixth. "It was number one when I did the search," said Dan, a little bit disappointed that I did not get to see my own blog as the "I'm Feeling Lucky" result.
I said to Dan, "Let's try MSN." I installed the CustomizeGoogle Firefox extension, which gives me the ability to search some of the other engines with a single click from Google's results page.
MSN did better. The blog is ranked number two there, right below the IIOP.NET home page. "That's fair." I said.
Well, it's another few days now. Being the curious kind, I kept an eye on the rankings of that blog entry on Google as well as MSN. And the result surprised me: my blog entry has dropped off Google's radar screen, while it has reached number one on MSN:
This is not the first time that I've noticed MSN Search seems to return more relevant results than Google Search. And I find myself clicking on the "MSN" link on the customized Google search screen more often lately.
What is your experience?
Re: Whatever Happened To Google Search?
No, no, no, no, no. It's the volatility I'm talking about. And I'm only using my page as an example. There have been many instances when I clicked on the MSN link to repeat a search that I have done on Google and felt that the results on MSN are more relevant.
The feeling of relevancy is something that's very subjective. That's why I asked if you have experienced something similar. However, people have been known to make search engine usage decisions. If I remember correctly, that's exactly why I started to use Google in the first place.
Re: Whatever Happened To Google Search?
Re: Whatever Happened To Google Search?
It's number three when I did the search a moment ago.
Now that this blog entry is out there for a couple of days, it would be interesting to compare search results for "Whatever Happened To Google Search."
By the time you read this, things might have changed. For right now, Google search showed only two results and this blog entry is not one of them. MSN showed nine results, and this blog is the first.