"The BEST Search engine Test"

If you think Google, Think again.

[sidyadav]

Hi,
I went to many sites/forums to see what is the best search engine on the web,but All the different sites say all the different Search engines. Some say MSN, many say Google . . . So I decided to do a test myself and see the best Search engine. I have included many of the major search engines and many search engines that are not that good at their database but have accurate results. I searched for "the" as my query. Here are the results, in order:

1) InfoSeek (http://infoseek.go.com) = 3,610,000,000
2) Google (http://google.com)= 3,500,000,000
3) Yahoo (http://search.yahoo.com) = 2,147,483,647
4) FAST (http://fastsearch.com) = 1,043,224,349
5) Lycos (http://lycos.com)= 1,043,182,584
6) Teoma (http://teoma.com)= 415,970,000
7) AltaVista (Worldwide) (http://altavista.com) = 187,166,910
8) Giga Blast (http://gigablast.com)= 1,304,332
<snip>
10) MSN (http://msn.com)= 0
11) Inktomi (http://hotbot.com) = 0
12) Ask Jeeves (http://ask.com)= Has many results but doesn't show how many

That's all the Good search engine's I could find.

I don't know if this was a fair test, because for the majority of the search engine's, it was. But as for MSN and Inktomi it wasn't, I think it's because "the" is a very common word and was ignored. But here we go. InfoSeek the winner, I am not sure if it is really a winner because it had a "Powered by Google" sign. I don't know if it runs from the database of Google or technology. If it's technology, its a winner, if not, it's a winner then too because it has more results then Google. Please feel free to write any comments , and please explain about Google and InfoSeek.

Regards,
Sid

[edited by: jeremy_goodrich at 7:55 pm (utc) on July 24, 2003]
[edit reason] see previous stickymail & TOS [/edit]

[dazz]

Well 1 2 and 3 are all Google results and 4 and 5 are Alltheweb.

Thats says it all for me.

[trillianjedi]

That doesn't actually tell you anything though, other than the amount of pages indexed. What use is it?

Not quite sure what you're trying to find out other than relative database sizes, but that certainly has nothing to do with a search engine being the "best".

TJ

[chiyo]

You just proved which search engines deliver the most pages looking for the word "the".

As you say, they differ because of different philosopies of what to rteurn for the query "the". If i was a SE, I would think the searcher was seriously deficient in mental capabilities and deliver the results they deserve.

You also presume the Best search engine is the one that has the most pages. I seriously doubt that these days.

Try Search Engine Showdown or Search Engine Watch. They have porbably done all the research for you!

[jeremy goodrich]

Yuntis - isn't on the list up there, but still pretty cool ;)

Still a research project @ a university, but nonetheless, very interesting. There was one "independent" agency that has rated Altavista, FAST, Ask, Google, and Inktomi.

Funny thing was, each time a different engine payed them $$$, that was the engine that was the "best"...jsut goes to show, the old saying about statistics must be true.

[sidyadav]

Thanks, I'll check Search engine showdown/watch down.

But I still don't get 1 thing: Is Yahoo Search done by Inktomi, Google or Overture? Because In the Inktomi Search engine Homepage they say "Yahoo has acquirred Inktomi" but on the overture website they say the same thing and user "dazz" says Google has the Yahoo Search engine. Please tell me what's the story.

Regards,
Sid

[kevinpate]

sidyadav

He who has the most pages for "the" has little.
What determines quality for user X is, when X types in A, or A B, or ABC, does X find that the results in the top 5, 10, 20 returned by the search are highly relevant to that particular search.

As for Yahoo, it has its own filter or two which it applies to google results. Yahoo is by and large though still returning serps garnered via google.

Yahoo has acquired Inktomi, and is in the process of making other acqusitions, including Overture, but those technologies are not in play today at Yahoo.