4 ms·

It's not a healthy situation, but that's largely due to the poor results other search engines provide. I tried using Yahoo! and Live for a while instead of Goo

It's not a healthy situation, but that's largely due to the poor results other search engines provide. I tried using Yahoo! and Live for a while instead of Google. I had forgotten how awful the results were. It wasn't the formatting or the speed, but the lack of relevance the results had to my query. It's no wonder people don't use Google's competitors. In the mean time, the rest of us have to pray that our site is considered "relevant" in Google's eyes.

inerte 18y ago
It's not even the results for some people, but Google itself. I've seen studies where the researchers show Yahoo results on Google's template, and vice-versa, and people still thought that Google had better results. Google is a brand nowadays (and a verb ;). The tech will become secondary in a near future. It's like Coke vs. Pepsi, they taste 99% alike and blind tests show costumers have no preference on one over another. I am not saying they don't have an edge on quality these days, but in the future, just relevant links on the page that appears after you type your search terms will not be enough.
- axod 18y ago
  Slightly off-topic, but: "It's like Coke vs. Pepsi, they taste 99% alike and blind tests show costumers have no preference on one over another." Sorry, but that's completely wrong. Pepsi is far sweeter. It wins on taste tests, whilst Coke wins in some tests where people drink an entire can. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cola_wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cola_wars
  - inerte 18y ago
    I stand corrected, thanks for the Cola war insight :) I guess I let out my own personal taste and bias and some faulty memory...
    - axod 18y ago
      ;) I actually can't stand the taste of Coke, but love Pepsi with a passion. Some people think I'm weird/being petty, but it's just a different taste.
      - zack 18y ago
        I don't think you're being weird. I do think you are conditioned by brilliant marketing. My Decision Making class did a taste test last quarter. The professor poured some Pepsi into 5 cups, and then poured some Coke into 5 cups, and then invited a student to do a taste test. Before the test began, she indicated a strong preference for Pepsi; then, after each cup, she was asked to indicate whether it was Coke or Pepsi. The result? She choose Pepsi/Coke with exactly 50% accuracy. Go figure. It's not a different taste. It really isn't.
      - axod 18y ago
        (Reply to Zack who's comment is dead): You can tell even by the smell. Perhaps you think I'm lying, but when served a brown fizzy drink in a cup, I can tell with 100% accuracy wether it is Coke, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, or Pepsi Max.
        twopoint718 18y ago
        I don't know exactly why but that sounds very funny to me. I would boast of this ability all the time.
        axod 18y ago
        The long winter evenings of blind taste testing at our house simply fly by ;)
        froo 18y ago
        Yep, I have this ability too - I thought I was the only one!
      - deleted 18y ago
        [deleted]
  - bad_user 18y ago
    I like Coke more because Pepsi is too sweet for me.
- Tichy 18y ago
  "I've seen studies where the researchers show Yahoo results on Google's template, and vice-versa, and people still thought that Google had better results." Just to clarify, I suppose you mean people thought the Google site with the Yahoo results was better than the Yahoo site with the Google results?
  - inerte 18y ago
    Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Yahoo search results on a Google webpage were considered more relevant than Google search results on the Yahoo webpage! Google is a brand. Some people automatically think it's better.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
- chris11 18y ago
  I checked this out, searching for nytimes.com with yahoo google and Microsft. The results were mostly the same. All sets of top ten results were from nytimes.com. The layout was almost the same, in fact it looked like Google and Yahoo were based on the same template. The speeds for yahoo and google were basically the same. Microsoft seemed a tiny bit slower, but they didn't mention the actual speed of the search, so I don't know for sure. The number of results were different. Microsoft had 1.8million, Google had 32million, and Yahoo had 59 million. Google had a mini search bar under the first result, nytimes.com, that let you search in the site. That feature is nice. Even though the sites are almost identical, I still preferred Google's results. The other sites seemed ugly. I'm not sure why that is. It could be that I have used Google for awhile, and just gotten used to their format. Or, it could be that Google does more effective research on how users interact with the site. For example, I remember seeing the video from Google tracking eye movements while searching. The eye movements were mainly focused on the top left corner of the search result. Yahoo's site design interfered with that eye movement. They have a giant red Yahoo in the top right corner. It stands out, and I think it is annoying and distracting.
aneesh 18y ago
Try again now. Both Yahoo! and Live are pretty close to Google right now in terms of relevance. Branding is another story, but the results aren't bad.
mhartl 18y ago
A few months ago I switched to Yahoo! Search as an experiment. I'm quite confident that, if you'd replaced the Yahoo! branding with Google's, I would never have known the difference. But yet I switched back. Why? I was hosting the Silicon Valley Rails meetup, and our speaker Emmett Shear (of Justin.tv) had forgotten to bring his laptop, and had to borrow mine. I was so uncomfortable at the idea of my home page---Yahoo!, of all things, and not Google!---being broadcast to a room of Rails hackers that I changed it back to the Canonical Choice. And now inertia has returned, and I'm back in the warm bosom of mother Google. I'm pretty sure that Yahoo! Search and Live Search are basically as good as Google nowadays. When it debuted, Google was qualitatively better than any other search engine, but today Google's lead is based mainly on branding.

inerte 18y ago

It's not even the results for some people, but Google itself. I've seen studies where the researchers show Yahoo results on Google's template, and vice-versa, and people still thought that Google had better results. Google is a brand nowadays (and a verb ;). The tech will become secondary in a near future. It's like Coke vs. Pepsi, they taste 99% alike and blind tests show costumers have no preference on one over another. I am not saying they don't have an edge on quality these days, but in the future, just relevant links on the page that appears after you type your search terms will not be enough.

axod 18y ago
Slightly off-topic, but: "It's like Coke vs. Pepsi, they taste 99% alike and blind tests show costumers have no preference on one over another." Sorry, but that's completely wrong. Pepsi is far sweeter. It wins on taste tests, whilst Coke wins in some tests where people drink an entire can. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cola_wars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cola_wars
- inerte 18y ago
  I stand corrected, thanks for the Cola war insight :) I guess I let out my own personal taste and bias and some faulty memory...
  - axod 18y ago
    ;) I actually can't stand the taste of Coke, but love Pepsi with a passion. Some people think I'm weird/being petty, but it's just a different taste.
    - zack 18y ago
      I don't think you're being weird. I do think you are conditioned by brilliant marketing. My Decision Making class did a taste test last quarter. The professor poured some Pepsi into 5 cups, and then poured some Coke into 5 cups, and then invited a student to do a taste test. Before the test began, she indicated a strong preference for Pepsi; then, after each cup, she was asked to indicate whether it was Coke or Pepsi. The result? She choose Pepsi/Coke with exactly 50% accuracy. Go figure. It's not a different taste. It really isn't.
    - axod 18y ago
      (Reply to Zack who's comment is dead): You can tell even by the smell. Perhaps you think I'm lying, but when served a brown fizzy drink in a cup, I can tell with 100% accuracy wether it is Coke, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, or Pepsi Max.
      - twopoint718 18y ago
        I don't know exactly why but that sounds very funny to me. I would boast of this ability all the time.
        axod 18y ago
        The long winter evenings of blind taste testing at our house simply fly by ;)
      - froo 18y ago
        Yep, I have this ability too - I thought I was the only one!
    - deleted 18y ago
      [deleted]
- bad_user 18y ago
  I like Coke more because Pepsi is too sweet for me.
Tichy 18y ago
"I've seen studies where the researchers show Yahoo results on Google's template, and vice-versa, and people still thought that Google had better results." Just to clarify, I suppose you mean people thought the Google site with the Yahoo results was better than the Yahoo site with the Google results?
- inerte 18y ago
  Yes, that's exactly what I mean. Yahoo search results on a Google webpage were considered more relevant than Google search results on the Yahoo webpage! Google is a brand. Some people automatically think it's better.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
chris11 18y ago
I checked this out, searching for nytimes.com with yahoo google and Microsft. The results were mostly the same. All sets of top ten results were from nytimes.com. The layout was almost the same, in fact it looked like Google and Yahoo were based on the same template. The speeds for yahoo and google were basically the same. Microsoft seemed a tiny bit slower, but they didn't mention the actual speed of the search, so I don't know for sure. The number of results were different. Microsoft had 1.8million, Google had 32million, and Yahoo had 59 million. Google had a mini search bar under the first result, nytimes.com, that let you search in the site. That feature is nice. Even though the sites are almost identical, I still preferred Google's results. The other sites seemed ugly. I'm not sure why that is. It could be that I have used Google for awhile, and just gotten used to their format. Or, it could be that Google does more effective research on how users interact with the site. For example, I remember seeing the video from Google tracking eye movements while searching. The eye movements were mainly focused on the top left corner of the search result. Yahoo's site design interfered with that eye movement. They have a giant red Yahoo in the top right corner. It stands out, and I think it is annoying and distracting.

aneesh 18y ago

Try again now. Both Yahoo! and Live are pretty close to Google right now in terms of relevance. Branding is another story, but the results aren't bad.

mhartl 18y ago

A few months ago I switched to Yahoo! Search as an experiment. I'm quite confident that, if you'd replaced the Yahoo! branding with Google's, I would never have known the difference. But yet I switched back. Why? I was hosting the Silicon Valley Rails meetup, and our speaker Emmett Shear (of Justin.tv) had forgotten to bring his laptop, and had to borrow mine. I was so uncomfortable at the idea of my home page---Yahoo!, of all things, and not Google!---being broadcast to a room of Rails hackers that I changed it back to the Canonical Choice. And now inertia has returned, and I'm back in the warm bosom of mother Google. I'm pretty sure that Yahoo! Search and Live Search are basically as good as Google nowadays. When it debuted, Google was qualitatively better than any other search engine, but today Google's lead is based mainly on branding.