This is the first part in a serious of blog posts I'm going to be making regarding the relevancy of search results. I'll be comparing the results from the 3 major search engines (, , and ). Here's how it will work:
- I will choose a keyword at random
- I'll do a search on each of the search engines using the exact same keyword
- Only the top 20 results (the first 2 pages) will be counted. This is because a majority of users don't go beyond page 2
- I will count each result returned that matches my search as a point. So a perfect score is 20, which should be nearly impossible.
- Results I will not count as relevant:
- Directories
- Wikipedia or Yahoo Answers links
- Manufacturers' links (if applicable)
- Links that are not relevant to my search, even if they match the keyword (for example, if I'm searching for a cat, as in a feline, then I wouldn't count results for a Caterpillar bulldozer)
- Any result that doesn't match what I had in mind for the keyword
- Google - 7 relevant results
- Yahoo - 15 relevant results
- MSN - 6 relevant results
We'll see in Part 2 (coming up next week) how the search engines fare when I use a more tricky keyword.
Stay tuned...
3comments:
Well if you are looking for tool chest for sale why did you type in tool chest? Why didn't you type in tool chest for sale? This just doesn't make sense. If you just type in tool chest and want something to magically appear then type in the exact keyword.
Sure I could have done that, but I was trying to think like an average user instead of a webmaster.
But, even if you look at the results on Google, it had the most irrelevant results as well. If I type in "tool chest", I probably want information on a tool chest instead of motivational websites and gaming portals. Those are relevant.
Very intersting results - I wouldn't think Yahoo would score so highly in this category. I followed up though and you're right - how irrelevant is a motivational website to this result? highly. maybe the new algo update will be more informative.