5 ms·
I actually have no idea how good the search results from other search engines were in 2004-2006. I was exclusively google by then and I'm willing to admit it's
by phire 6y ago
I actually have no idea how good the search results from other search engines were in 2004-2006. I was exclusively google by then and I'm willing to admit it's entirely plausible it's competitors had similar results.
But in 2001-2002, I remember Google having a significantly better search experience. And it was massively better than all it's competitors from the 90s.
A large factor were the snippets, which gave you a decent indication if the result was relevant before even clicking. Before the other search engines copied that feature, they would just show the contents of the meta description tag.
It also seemed to index a much wider range of sites and ranked them better.
- cbsmith 5y ago> But in 2001-2002, I remember Google having a significantly better search experience. And it was massively better than all it's competitors from the 90s. Yup, I would say it was better through most a good chunk of 2002, which garnered it [checks notes]... about 16% market share at that point. If you include the AOL traffic, that'd be 21%. To put that in perspective, MSN's search market share grew by more than that entire share just in 2003. > A large factor were the snippets, which gave you a decent indication if the result was relevant before even clicking. Before the other search engines copied that feature, they would just show the contents of the meta description tag. Yup, the impact of that UX was huge. It really improved conversion rates. Everyone else figured that out pretty quickly and adopted that. > It also seemed to index a much wider range of sites and ranked them better. Really, it was the ranking function. As their competitors rapidly discovered, having a broader set of sites actually made having a good ranking function so much more crucial.