Yahoo versus Google

[webman]

It seems to me that Google is full of strange quirks, inconsistancies and problems

Oh right, what sort?

[CyberNerd]

Here's a random example.

Do a Yahoo web search for "richard and margaret paintings".

As you would expect, the top result is a website about books and paintings by richard and margaret.

Now do the same search in Google.

No.1 is "The Dudley mail - Margaret Raynor". Hardly as directly relevant to the search!

I did the search in google, the top result was this thread:
http://www.edugeek.net/index.php?nam...er=asc&start=0

[localzuk]

Not necessarily! This site is a very popular and notable site now, and as such we feature highly in any relevant search query. And as such, this thread contains those terms several times - which means we are a good candidate for a top position.

Also, I know I'm focussing on a single search term here, but if you compare the results, they are very similar, and I would say the google results are actually more relevant due to google not including any link to an ebay store...

[Lee_K_81]

Just a thought but.......

If i set up a site all about me, and i dont link to anyone, and nobody links to me, Google and yahoo would never find it.

Maybe Margaret and Richard never actually submitted their site to google for indexing. Maybe they use an web hosting company that partners with yahoo and automatically indexes their site with them. There's so many unknowns here that we cant possibly decide which search engine is "best" from one poorly written site that doesnt have any links to external sites (and i assume isn't linked by any external sites either). Also worth noting that if you search for richard and margarets paintings yahoo doesnt find them either.

[localzuk]

Surely it's better to find the website of the people you are trying to find out about, rather than a website that talks about that person's website!

No - that would require you to actually use some reasonable search terms. The terms you entered are very ambiguous - richard and margaret are names that are common when it comes to paintings... If you had entered 'richard and margaret ingram paintings' (which narrows down the results hugely) you would see that google puts the ingram sight at the top. And as someone else said - the site is poorly constructed in terms of SEO, which, combined with ambiguous search terms, is a recipe for poor results in a search engine that uses a large number of determining factors when ranking results.

Also, why is it good that Google refers you to a page on a forum that might be discussing the topic you've searched for, but bad when Yahoo points you to a page within ebay that might be selling a product you're looking for?

And the reason why edugeek is better than ebay for a result? Because ebay is a site that sells goods, and doesn't provide information - whereas this site is the opposite, so could well be a useful source of information.

[CyberNerd]

Not necessarily! This site is a very popular and notable site now, and as such we feature highly in any relevant search query. And as such, this thread contains those terms several times - which means we are a good candidate for a top position..

Besides, I did a search for the exact phrase that jwood posted and google correctly gave the hottest link with that exact phrase. This is good for me because I often search for error messages to fix problems - having well matched phrases and new documents is good in that situation, google has gone up in my estimation.

does yahoo have a linux/windows search?
http://www.google.com/microsoft
http://www.google.com/linux

[localzuk]

And the reason why edugeek is better than ebay for a result? Because ebay is a site that sells goods, and doesn't provide information - whereas this site is the opposite, so could well be a useful source of information.

Perhaps not everyone is looking for information? Maybe someone is looking to purchase a certain item, in which case excluding ebay is detrimental to the quality of the search results.

A lot of people seem very biased towards google because it serves edugeek well. Not every internet user is looking for technical info.

Google is a search engine for information - if people want to search for ebay items, I'd suggest they don't use google and instead search on ebay...

[localzuk]

I think you'll find a lot of people use the internet for shopping and therefore need their results to include sites that provide certain products.

The fact that Google excludes ebay proves my point that they are prone to developing a dislike of a certain site for no justifiable reason and swiping them from their results.

Other shopping sites are included in Google.

Other shopping sites aren't as changing as ebay - ie. items come and go on ebay, and maintaining an external index would be slightly nightmarish, due to items vanishing. This site changes a lot also, but mostly with addition of information only.

I would suggest that sites with content that regularly gets deleted are poorer quality endpoints for search result sites.

[localzuk]

Have they submitted their domain to google for crawling?

[webman]

That's nice, they use frames

[webman]

No, but I' guessing you work for the Conspiracy against Google Association?

[DaveP]

I suggest that this some of the posters to this thread are entrenched in their positions, firmly believing that what they are saying is absolutely true. Furthermore I suggest that if you find that a particular search engine [perhaps your favoured search engine] does not give you the result you want you are quite at liberty to try another. I probably would not use Google to find a scientific term, or terms, which was/is quite specific and out of the mainstream. Rather I would use a search engine like Scirus [http://www.scirus.com]

These types of search engines are configured with the target audience in mind. Or perhaps I would use a web crawler to interrogate multiple search engines at once: Myriad Search [www.myriadsearch.com] will do this, but of course there are many others.

None of this is a secret and I think that similar opinions have been expressed elsewhere. I would just think that exchanges in this post could be termed ‘frank’ or ‘strong’ and there is nothing wrong in that. But those expressing those views do not seem to be willing to accept what another person posting is saying, but rather coming back with another point to counter the point made by the last person making a point [if that isn't too many 'points' in one sentence!]

I do not say these things expecting others to agree or to persuade them around to my point of view. I am just expressing my opinion, much as others have done in earlier posts on this topic.

[DaveP]

Maybe I should not post this in view of the tone of the earlier posts, but for those who want to compare the results of search engines directly Myriad [and others] will allow you to compare the results of a single search: Those results separated by tabs [See attached pictures]

[mac_shinobi]

I think the thing to take away from this is that there is more than one search engine and that they work differently.

If you search with (say) Yahoo for something and you can't find it then try Google; if you try Google and it doesn't work then try Yahoo. If neither of those works then try another one.

I doubt we'll ever get to the situation where any one search engine finds everything you want - what's that saying about "when you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail?" On the internet, your toolbox has more than just hammers:-)

Thats just the same with anti spyware and possibly anti virus apps, at least with windows as far as im aware ( could be wrong )

But you always tend to take the shot gun approach, if one thing doesn't work then try another.

I mean if your looking for a certain item on amazon and you can't find it you would normally just go to another site like play.com or else where obviously depending on what you are looking for.

Personal preference and what you are used to at the end of the day.

[sahmeepee]

I think you'll find a lot of people use the internet for shopping and therefore need their results to include sites that provide certain products.

The fact that Google excludes ebay proves my point that they are prone to developing a dislike of a certain site for no justifiable reason and swiping them from their results.

Oh my. The ebay results they exclude on the front page they make up for tenfold with their bleeding froogle/shopping/product search. How many times have I had to exclude ebay from the query?!!? The lowest price items are often from ebay up to about page 4 of the results. I wish they'd let me set a preference to always exclude it!

"Sort by relevance" is also a pile of dogpoo as well and shouldn't be the default, especially as it keeps flicking back to it each time you tweak your query!