For years Google’s been the big kid on the block when it comes to search. There simply wasn’t any other choice.
The web’s changing now and everywhere you look, Google’s moved up in the world, seemingly expanding into every possible direction. They are now even in direct competition with Microsoft. Thing is, while they’re focused in other areas, their search engine competition might not only be catching up with them—they may be doing a better job.
I spent quite a bit of time recently searching the various major search engines (Google, Yahoo and MSN) and comparing their SERPS (Search Engine Result Pages) to see where the good information lies.
What I found surprised me quite a bit. My guess is it’ll surprise you also.
Is Google Still The Best?
I found that consistently, and based on real-world value, the SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) of Yahoo, and to a lesser degree MSN, were providing were much better than those provided by Google. So, what does that say?
Well, that I had a much easier time finding what I was looking for with Yahoo. And this even before Google’s latest update which really hurt some site’s rankings. It seems the filter is even tougher. Maybe too tough?
Google also seems to be handling entire phrase searching badly. An “unquoted” phrase seems to return better results than a quoted phrase at times. That seems backwards to me and I know it used to be better.
Now, as to why that is, I’ve got no clue. It could be that Google is really getting swamped by spam and shady SEO techniques. I do know that most people with web sites focus strongly on Google—this includes search engine spammers. With good reason, they are the #1 search engine on the planet. What’s important to note though is that people will go with what works, and Google might not always be king when it comes to search engines.
More To Come
I wish I could give you some practical SEO advice based on these observations. Unfortunately, at this point anyway, I’m as baffled as you probably are. I plan on looking much further into this and my hope is that I can pass along some good tips and advice.
I do have some advice you can use right now though. If you’re not finding what you’re looking for with Google, give Yahoo a shot. It certainly helped me quite a bit.
Do you have any documentation to substantiate these claims? My experience with Google has been completely opposite from what you have claimed. Perhaps we are searching differently.
Kim — Documentation? No. Google doesn’t release documentation, or really talk about, this kind of thing.
But the proof is out there. At least it was last week. Google seems to be messing with their stuff and it’s changing every day. In general what I’m seeing is this:
I search with Google for “peoplecentric web” for example. I find the first two results are siimply links to the actual page. The actual page is the 9th result.
In Yahoo it’s #1.
Now, that is an example of something I published, but I’ve seen similar results with quite a few of my recent searches.
What seems to be going on is that they’ve tweaked their filter and it can’t tell the difference between duplicate content and something that is nothing more than a link. On top of that, it’s got no way to accuratley rank on a page by page basis.
Now, again, this is all conjecture. There is no real way to tell exactly what’s going on. However, I can tell you that I’ve had much better luck, in the last week or so, searching with Yahoo.
Kim — I just ran that search on Google again and it’s changed. Now the actual page is #6 and every result above it is a link to that page. Things seem to be shifting around.
“I’ve seen similar results with quite a few of my recent searches”
That may be, but it still remains to be seen whether the relatively few searches you do is reflective of a trend among the presumably millions of searches done on Google every day.
“Things seem to be shifting around.”
If there’s anything definitive in this post, that’s probably it. :)
Kim — Well, I suppose that’s true, but I run enough, on enough different subjects, to have noticed a tend.
The basic point is that any search that returns a page that simply links to another page before the page it links to is a bad result. Google seems to be doing more and more of this…which makes thing harder to find.
Not that it’s ever been easy. I’ve been less then impressed with the advancements any search engine has been making. To be totally honest most of the results, in all the search engines, are pretty poor.
I’ve experienced a lack of consistency in recent Google searches.
Repeating the same search on two consecutive days tends to deliver considerably differing result. Alas, I havent’t documented anything of that, but the feeling grows.
One could argue that content is added to Google’s index day by day and these constant flux might affect search results as well.
But I have noticed this behaviour even with search terms where I would not expect considerable changes of the corpus within a one day period.
I agree with Kim, these kinds of claims are silly unless you have actual statistics to back up your claims. Where is the data you used to make your determination? Not from Google, but from your own experiments. If this is just qualitative then Kim is also right, there’s nothing definitive.
Sean — I’m sorry, they weren’t really supposed to be “claims”. They were intended as simple observations. They’re not intended, and I don’t think represented, as any sort of quantitative (or even qualitative) evidence of anything.
I’m simply passing along my observations and theorizing about what they mean. Nothing more than that. The fact of the matter, even if I were to gather and present the data you are looking for it wouldn’t provide a definitive answer for anything. Google changes all the time and they never admit to tinkering with anything.
What’s definitive is that I’m finding things easier with Yahoo! and that I’m seeing many results that are less than helpful from Google. That’s about it. Take or leave as you wish.
Is Google losing ground in the search engine race?
put another way
Is Yahoo catching up or are they just riding the wave created by Google?
remember: its much easier for the smaller elephants to walk thru the tall grass.
Many searches I make on google return links to the website above the website itself. Equally frustrating is when a search returns a sub-page of a website above the website itself (when I’m searching for the organization, not for a more specific piece of information). This does seem to happen more and more often with Google. I wouldn’t say that Yahoo is necessarily getting better—it’s Google that’s getting worse.
Of course the decline is quality is the result of Google being the #1 target and market-leader. But some of the simple things—like showing the website itself first rather than after links or sub-pages—this is just basic search engine stuff. I can accept that making advancements in search engines is hard, but Google is actually moving backwards.
Yes, my observations, like Keith’s, are based on personal experience. But the simplest test—showing a link to a above the page itself—is easily verifiable, and telling. Besides, if Google’s good in tests, but bad in personal, everyday use, then what good is that?
I wonder what Keith’s observations mean for those of us that create/manage web sites. Is this fluctuation going to continue? Do we need to daily, weekly or monthly continue to revise sites in the hopes of them continuing to recieve high rankings in search engines? Will paying attention to SEO be worth it down the road?
I have to agree. I’ve decided Google is not longer my search engine of choice. It’s full of spam, and the SERP never makes sense. I’ve found that my own websites rank higher on MSN and Yahoo, for searches I know I should be at the top of.
I think a big problem is the pagerank system. I don’t know who thought of it, but popularity and relevance are not the same thing. There’s probably some other factors to the Google system that’s throwing it off, and it seems like the entire algorithm has become a mess.
I agree that the relevancy of Yahoo and MSN searches is far better lately, and from now on, if I want answers, I’ll look there first.
I’ll document some fact soon, for all the skeptics, to see exactly what I’m talking about.
At search for english webpages, the SERPS-quality of the 3 big players may be near to each other. When you search for german websites, there is no choice but to use Google.