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About 1 month ago I switched from google to bing. There different queries that use the to measure 'better'. For simple queries 'strncmp', 'giraffe', 'sound tr

About 1 month ago I switched from google to bing. There different queries that use the to measure 'better'. For simple queries 'strncmp', 'giraffe', 'sound transit schedule' ... Google, Bing and Samuru perform pretty well. But Samuru is extremely slow. For more complex queries like, 'seattle dumpling restaurant that is famous in singapore' or 'how to zip a list in ruby'. I find that Google always comes out on top, bing lacks the previous search history to personalize my searches and often thinks I mean (zip as in zipfile)... But samuru gave me relevant results for all three which is rather surprising. Another type is one for people/social related searches... Bing's facebook/twitter/linkedin/yelp integration actually makes it better than google because the 'snapshot' bar it has is super helpful. However Samuru results are on par with Google and Bing results here (minus the snapshot bar). Overall I was skeptical but other than it being unbearable slow (Google spoilt us with speed), Samuru does have very good search results for what I assume is not a mutlibillion dollar product.

jggonz 13y ago
If it isn't too much trouble, try your queries on blekko and let us know what you think. We actually have a /programming slashtag that is very useful for these kind of queries. http://blekko.com/ws/?q=how+to+zip+a+list+in+ruby+%2Fruby http://blekko.com/ws/?q=how+to+zip+a+list+in+ruby+%2Fruby http://blekko.com/ws/?q=seattle+dumpling+restaurant+that+is+famous+in+singapore http://blekko.com/ws/?q=seattle+dumpling+restaurant+that+is+... Just for fun... results in tablet-friendly format: http://izik.com/?q=seattle%20dumpling%20restaurant%20that%20is%20famous%20in%20singapore http://izik.com/?q=seattle%20dumpling%20restaurant%20that%20...
- jggonz 13y ago
  We also have local results: http://izik.com/?q=seattle%20dumpling%20restaurant http://izik.com/?q=seattle%20dumpling%20restaurant
- drakaal 13y ago
  I like slash tags and Booleans, but the truth is search should work with out the need for those things. We support - to make things go away. Later we will expose some of the cooler things we do behind the scenes like "reviews" or "instructional" or "oped" searches, or "Simple English" but we want to do that in a way that doesn't require syntax. "If it requires syntax it isn't user friendly" is our internal battle cry.
  - greglindahl 13y ago
    Yeah, it's definitely the case that users don't want to learn or type syntax in a search engine -- Daniel Russell of Google says that a majority of searchers think they are advanced users of search engines, but a majority of them don't know about or use "" or -. That's why blekko and izik both invoke that syntax "under the hood", automatically -- starting in November 2011.
drakaal 13y ago
Do your search a second time. Our index isn't exhaustive yet, and we are slow if we haven't seen enough of the results pages before. We generate the summaries and a bunch of other things after something has appeared in a search result. This is because we aren't a billion dollar company and have to be efficient in our indexing.

jggonz 13y ago

If it isn't too much trouble, try your queries on blekko and let us know what you think. We actually have a /programming slashtag that is very useful for these kind of queries. http://blekko.com/ws/?q=how+to+zip+a+list+in+ruby+%2Fruby http://blekko.com/ws/?q=how+to+zip+a+list+in+ruby+%2Fruby http://blekko.com/ws/?q=seattle+dumpling+restaurant+that+is+famous+in+singapore http://blekko.com/ws/?q=seattle+dumpling+restaurant+that+is+... Just for fun... results in tablet-friendly format: http://izik.com/?q=seattle%20dumpling%20restaurant%20that%20is%20famous%20in%20singapore http://izik.com/?q=seattle%20dumpling%20restaurant%20that%20...

jggonz 13y ago
We also have local results: http://izik.com/?q=seattle%20dumpling%20restaurant http://izik.com/?q=seattle%20dumpling%20restaurant
drakaal 13y ago
I like slash tags and Booleans, but the truth is search should work with out the need for those things. We support - to make things go away. Later we will expose some of the cooler things we do behind the scenes like "reviews" or "instructional" or "oped" searches, or "Simple English" but we want to do that in a way that doesn't require syntax. "If it requires syntax it isn't user friendly" is our internal battle cry.
- greglindahl 13y ago
  Yeah, it's definitely the case that users don't want to learn or type syntax in a search engine -- Daniel Russell of Google says that a majority of searchers think they are advanced users of search engines, but a majority of them don't know about or use "" or -. That's why blekko and izik both invoke that syntax "under the hood", automatically -- starting in November 2011.

drakaal 13y ago

Do your search a second time. Our index isn't exhaustive yet, and we are slow if we haven't seen enough of the results pages before. We generate the summaries and a bunch of other things after something has appeared in a search result. This is because we aren't a billion dollar company and have to be efficient in our indexing.