martinibuster - 9:53 am on Jan 2, 2005 (gmt 0)

As stated earlier, Korbel is known for their champagne style wine and not for their wine. If Google is listing them number one for that term, it might be said that Google is mistaken and MSN Search Beta is correct in not listing them for a search for Korbel Wine.

Strictly speaking, msn is correct. However it could also be said that MSN search might need to do some semantic guessing, and assume the searcher doesn't know the difference between wine and champagne.

Incidentally, Korbel ranks number one for Korbel Champagne, which is how it should be ranking (if you consider how Korbel sees itself). I just searched for "Korbel" on MSN Beta and it came up number one. So it is evident that MSN knows what Korbel is. It's more of an issue with how Korbel sees itself and how it has decided to market itself. Read on...

Now here is a different search. A search for Roederer Wine has the Roederer Estate in Anderson Valley as the number one result. But Roederer is known more for their champagne, and they don't rank for that. But it's not really champagne, even though that's how you and I may refer to it. It's sparkling wine.

Roederer's poor ranking for Roederer Champagne is not MSN's fault: Roederer Estate is located in California, not in France, so the correct reference to their product is Sparkling Wine, and that's how they are marketing their product (correctly, I might add).

Now here's where it is going to blow your mind: Do a Google search for "roederer wine" and you'll see that Google fails to rank the Roederer estate. MSN wins.

Korbel optimized their pages for champagne, specifically California Champagne. Strictly speaking that may be incorrect. Champagne is from France and sparkling wine comes from everywhere else. So it's Korbel's choice to target the word champagne and not wine, and MSN picked up on that.

The proof of my statement is if you do an allintitle search for wine on the Korbel website: zero results. But if you do an allintitle search for champagne you get five results.

The reverse is true for Roederer. Allintitle for champagne is zero. Allintitle for "wine" produces many results. What's confusing Google is that Roederer modifies most instances of the word Wine with the word sparkling (sparkling wine). MSN doesn't make that disctinction and is able to produce the result.

Who is right and who is wrong? Both are right and both are wrong. It's an opinion of what exists on the web. The results should be different. MSN results should not be measured against Google's results, because then you are presupposing that Google is right. Google is not. It's just their opinion.