Microsoft's Search Falls Far Short of Google's

According to the Washington Post

[encyclo]

From the Washington Post article [washingtonpost.com]

Our tests of the new MSN Search's trial version (beta.search.msn.com) suggest that it's not as accurate as Google. While both sites do fine on many queries, our comparison of roughly two dozen search phrases gave the edge to Google at least two out of three times.

The testing is done better than for the earlier BBC article, but it's far from exhaustive and completely US-centric. However, it attempts to give a fair impression of an end-user search pattern.

The article does mention at the end that MS are aware that their results aren't up to scratch yet, but it makes you wonder why Microsoft are making so much noise about it when first impressions count for so much.

There is also a small irony in the fact that the article page has Google search boxes top and bottom!

[Essex_boy]

Microsoft are making so much noise about it - its called hype.

Most web savvy people know beta means testing so there fore a new search engine is just about to appear on the block.

[The Contractor]

Yeah, I take that article's worth as a grain of salt. I have seen/done many searches that show one is superior than the other depending on topic. You also have to consider that msnbot hasn't had time to grow a large index and many of the sites it has included have been just recently crawled. I think they are doing a great job considering the amount of time they have been crawling.

I think as of right now Yahoo has much more to worry about than Google. I would like to see a well written article on that comparison given how long Yahoo has been in the search field. I don't think the MSN is very far behind in quality and in many cases much better than Yahoo is today. What happened to Yahoo? I think they got greedy and dropped too many sites that INK had included for free – it shows in their quality and the number of sites that are "not" included.

Nothing against Yahoo or Google, but I'm glad that MS has entered the arena – makes everyone work a little harder ;)

Now whatever happened to Teoma's big plans.....

[Lord Majestic]

Now whatever happened to Teoma's big plans.....

IMO Teoma's people reached their big plans by selling the company to Ask Jeeves.....

[Essex_boy]

i concur contractor, I think Y have a big problem on their hands.

The main one is their image, its still seen by many people in business as a kiddie toy. Slightly wacky and off beat not to be taken too seriously. thatll do them more harm in the current environment than any thing else.

Lets see them run that same article in a year.

[BeeDeeDubbleU]

Our tests of the new MSN Search's trial version (beta.search.msn.com) suggest that it's not as accurate as Google.

Still no mention of the fact that Google has not been featuring new sites since February '04. (How do they get away with this?)