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Size Less Important Than User Utility
By Jim Hedger, StepForth News Editor, StepForth Placement Inc.
August 17, 2005
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Last week saw the resumption of the search engine size wars in which one
major search engine claims to be larger than its rivals, prompting those
rivals to rapidly upsize themselves. Yahoo fired the first round at Google,
claiming to have over 20billion objects accessible in their database.
Google, which can only claim about 13billion objects fired back with questions
about
measurements, basically stating Yahoo was mistaken or misleading in its
claims. Others got in on the act and the blog-o-sphere was full of stories
about Yahoo’s obsession with size. By the beginning of this week,
the search marketing community was fed up with being fed tripe about the
importance of size, as reflected August 16th in Danny Sullivan’s post
to Search Engine Watch, “Screw
Size! I dare Google and Yahoo to Report on Relevancy ”
The frustration with the major search engines felt by serious search marketers
is real. Our clients don’t care about size and neither does their
money. They care about being found when searchers are seeking information
about products or services they sell. They care about potential clients
and their ability to present information to them. They care about being
relevant.
Search engine users don’t really care about size either. Given the
mind-boggling amount of data available via even the smallest of the major
search engines, most users have no idea of the depth of search results,
as they tend to look only at the Top10 or 20 listings. Even if Yahoo returns
thousands more references than Google for any given keyword query, both
know that only the first 20 links tend see any measurable traffic. Again,
it isn’t about being the biggest; it is about being the best. Being
biggest does not necessarily mean being best.
There is no real scientific method of proving which search engine is the
biggest, and no real way to gauge which one is best. That’s not to
say folks aren’t trying though. The thing to remember is, “best” means
something slightly different to every search engine user.
Over the past four months, well known search-blogger RustyBrick has been
tracking search engine relevance through RustySearch an ongoing blind user-test
of results drawn from a random Big4 search engine that is reminiscent of
the Pepsi-Challenge. The RustyBrick site has posted live-time
results and
an explanation of the methodology. As it turns out, the Big4 search engines
all return relevant results most of the time with Yahoo enjoying a slight
lead over Google in overall relevancy. The biggest problem with this study
is that users who tend to be very well versed in search engines and search
marketing provide the bulk of the data. In other words, the study group
is not likely to be highly representative of the far greater majority of
general search users. Nevertheless, it does provide the only ongoing view
of how its unique study group rates search engine result pages generated
by the Big4.
The National Center for Supercomputing
Applications (NCSA) at the University
of Illinois took up a study of results generated by Google and Yahoo in
reaction to Tim Mayer’s August 8th post at the Yahoo
Search Blog that
started this round of the size war. Basing their findings on the average
number of results returned from 10,012 random queries, the results clearly
show Google tending to return (on average), three times the number of references
Yahoo does. The study-document states quite early that there is no real
way to test the actual size of the index so its methodology is borrowed
from a method pioneered by search legends Krishna
Bharat and Andrei
Broder that samples the size of search results based on words derived from previous
search queries. The NCSA study shows Google gives a greater number of results
than Yahoo though it in no way intended to suggest those results are better
or more relevant.
In some ways, the results of the two studies seem to cancel each other
out with Yahoo nosing ahead of Google in the first and Google squashing
Yahoo in the second. Unfortunately, neither study offers a conclusive analysis
of which search engine is the best. RustySearch provides data on which search
results are considered most relevant, showing Yahoo and Google receiving
similar relevancy ratings even though the NCSA study demonstrates Google
returns far more results than Yahoo does.
Perhaps the two studies combined show that Yahoo has better filters than
Google does though that still does not show conclusively which is the better
of the two. As their results appear to be relatively equally relevant, perhaps
a measure of which is the best comes in overall usefulness to searchers
and, ultimately to advertisers.
The real interesting competition between all the major search engines is
being waged on the battlefield of usefulness and user loyalty. This is the
user-focused space in which one or more of the Big4 will eventually rise
to dominate the various sectors of search. The question is, what is useful
to search engine users?
Over the past few years each of the major search engines has introduced
a number of new tools that on their own might not seem to have a lot to
do with organic search results but collectively have a lot to do with the
business of search.
For example, Google, Yahoo and MSN each offer sizable free email accounts
to their users, some of whom like myself maintain addresses at all three.
Google and Microsoft are sparring over satellite mapping technologies, expanding
on the usefulness of maps in relation to local search users. Earlier this
week, Google introduced Froogle
Local, a revolutionary simple application
for mobile device users.
Yahoo has also made improvements to their local search system, this time
by allowing registered users to write Wiki-like reviews for local establishments
and services. These reviews will be available to other registered users
and distributed to members of the reviewer’s social network. Earlier
today John
Battelle wrote an excellent review of improvements to Yahoo Local
and their usefulness to Yahoo searchers.
Business
2.0’s Om Malik says Google appears to be ready to introduce
a national WiFi network while Yahoo’s VOIP based upgrades to its Instant
Messaging client. Its purchase of internet phone company Dialpad has analysts
speculating Yahoo is about to enter the VOIP cyber-phone market, a rumour
Yahoo is vigorously
denying. Regardless of their denial, the VOIP based
improvements to the IM are indicative of much larger plans around digital
voice transmission.
The point to all the information above is simple. Google and Yahoo are
both working feverishly to provide their loyal users tools that are useful
to them. There are dozens of other examples of user-friendly tools created
to capture user-loyalty such as blog support, desktop search applications,
toolbars of varying shapes and sizes and personalized syndication feeds.
These types of applications and labour saving tools are what the search
tools are betting on to retain current users and win new ones.
As demonstrated by the most recent Nielsen
Net Ratings, the strategy seems
to be working with Google, Yahoo, and MSN (which offer the greatest number
of user-focused tools) leading the pack by a wide margin. Guess which of
the three offers the most useful tools to the greatest number of searchers?
Now, guess which of the three can offer the biggest distributed bang for
an advertiser’s buck. That’s what our clients care about.
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