There's certainly a lot of science and theory that goes into predicting the success of a company, including search engines. I'm nothing close to an expert in this subject, but I've decided to educate myself by conducting a little experiment. I'm interested to know what is different about each search engine. I know there are many hidden things that go into the business and economic successes of companies but most of them aim to in part please users. I've decided to start with a random site called dogpile. Apparently, it compiles Google, Yahoo, Bing, and Ask into one search engine. I wonder how it really works, and how it combines all the different methods each engine employs. I'll put "restaurants in boston" in each search engine, as it will certainly yield results in all, but isn't too broad. When I searched in dogpile, the first few hits were "Boston Dining Guide" and a link to zagat.com. Interestingly, below the top few hits it said "Sponsored: Ads by Google." Has Google Ads or their advertising clients sponsored these hits? What about with Yahoo? Below the top few it starts saying "Found on: Google, Bing, Yahoo! Search..." Most of these sites are meant to educate people on restaurants, but don't focus on one, nor do they provide links to specific location or food variety searches. The aren't websites saying "we are the best restaurant in Boston," it's purely links to things such as Yellowbook.com. As a viewer this site seems pretty helpful. If I was from another place, this would be a good start for finding a restaurant I liked in Boston, although it might take me a while to weed through all the hits. I'd like to also know more about how dogpile came into existence and how it amalgamates the four search engines.
The next site I'll test is Yahoo Search. Although Bing and Yahoo have merged they still appear as two separate sites. Interestingly, Yahoo has a very simple home page, similar to that of Google. Yahoo elicited first three different restaurants, Pizzeria Regna, Finale, and Pagluica's Restaurant and showed their locations on a map. Apparently these are under "Local Results" and clicking on a link can bring you to 7022 more local results. Yahoo also gives links to specific places, such as Back Bay, Beacon Hill, and Kenmore Square. The first two regular results are at local.yahoo.com. It's interesting that Yahoo so obviously endorses itself. It contradicts with how Google CEO Scmidt is hesitant to allow Google to become content creators as he worries that it will favor Google's content and will become less trustworthy to the public (Auletta's Googled). I don't know how I feel about Yahoo favoring its own site. I suppose it does make me trust the search engine less, but at the same time I trust Yahoo to help me with restaurant choices. Below the first two Yahoo links are links to the "Best restaurants" and then below follows the yellowpages, similar to Dogpile. In general Yahoo Search makes me feel like I'll get somewhere faster than Bing. If I know anything about Boston, such as that the North End has Italian Food, I can specify The North End and get a map of a few restaurants there.
It appears Yahoo has done some redesigning as the text colors have changed to purple, and the homepage, while still simple, has moved around a bit. Also going to search.yahoo.com brings you to a page that no longer is called Yahoo Search. I wonder if the Search part has been used in the merger with Bing. Below is the old Yahoo search:
My next variable is Bing. My first impression of it is that it's incredibly different from Google. It has more color variation, the background is grey, and it displays pictures of American Olympians on the homepage. It's incredibly interesting that Bing is displaying itself as pro-American. Google considers itself universal, so maybe Bing is trying to seem more wholesome and All-American, a company that would never run into issues with China's government and one that would never violate anti-trust laws. Bing's logo interestingly is much more simple than Google's (color and font wise), and its use of onomatopoeia make me feel like I'll get results instantly. I can almost hear a bing sound as millions of search results are produced! If I wasn't looking at Bing's homepage with a critical lens I would probably think it more personal than Google. It seems less stark and cold. Links at the bottom to the Medal count and other olympic events make it seem more like a magazine, but it's not as in your face as most magazine's sites so I think I'd be more willing to click on the links and less likely to exit out of the site from being overwhelmed.
When I Binged (interestingly the name can be turned into a verb like "googled") "Restaurants in Boston" I got something similar to Yahoo. It was five rather than three restaurants with a map of Boston showing where they are all located. The first it was from boston.com, the Boston Globe's site. I was pleasantly surprised to see a newspaper site as the first hit. I trust the Globe and seeing a responsible source first makes me trust Bing. After a few hits Bing starts giving users new options. First is : Top Boston Restaurants." A few are displayed but a link takes you to more if desired. The next is "Best Restaurants in Boston," the next "Famous Boston Restaurants." Other's involve different food types or locations. This seems to demonstrate the concept of vertical search that Auletta discusses in Googled. Each of these different links bring a person to a very specific type of search, using key words such as "top" and "best". It's more specific than I recall Google being. In all honesty I feel that Bing is giving me more of what I want. When I want to browse articles about a broad topic, such as health care, I like Google. I'm exposed to lots of different view points and ideas. It's funny that Google wants to give me what I want, yet gives me the viewpoints of other people. Maybe it really is all-knowing and knows I like doing research before making my own opinions! I understand the argument that Google will prevent us from being exposed to many different viewpoints, but I don't think that has happened yet. With Bing I feel like the information will be easier to sort through, and for searches such as these that's what I'm looking for. It won't be blogs of people talking about restaurants, but sites bringing me to top rated restaurants. While Google organizes its results with the less bloggy and more official sites first, it's so easy to find oneself still pursuing a search in the fifth page of Google, where it's often less official.
Bing also has a little module that says "Ask your friends to recommend restaurants" with logos and links of facebook and twitter. Bing seems to be doing what MIT grad student Kwan Lee mentioned Google doesn't in Auletta's Googled. Google doesn't take into account social networks and gravitations of its users. Google displays things by using a CPU to find them and categorize them, but people like Lee argue that the brain wants more than just what a computer thinks they want, they want interaction with people. Bing is giving users an option to branch out and receive oppinions, and make connections all from their search engine.
Bing's logo:
My final test is the Google control. When I typed "Restaurants in Boston" into Google I received many results, however they didn't feel organized. Some of the websites were the same as the other search engines, but they weren't categorized. Interestingly, the first site was a sponsored site. I know Google avoids taking bribes or money to rank a site higher in the search. Maybe since they say it's sponsored they assume people won't count it as a real search result. Google out did the rest of the sites on their map. They had seven different restaurants bubbled on a map of Boston at the beginning! Google really does do everything bigger. I'm still trying to decide if they really do things bigger and better though! It feels as if Google's page is visually disorganized. There was no categorizing of any apparent kind. I suppose Google hopes to study a person's mind and know what kind of category they're searching, but it didn't achieve that for me. They would have known that I favor North End italian restaurants, but few of those popped up on the map of local results. Maybe if I constantly ordered pizza through Domino's online service it would display pizza results on the first page or if I often Googled a certain restaurant, that same restaurant would appear on the map. Overall, Google is a bit of a mystery to me. I wonder if these sites are actually arranged in a way that would aid me in my search better than another search engine. The people behind Google are so intelligent that I feel like they've figured out some kind of visual or subconscious mechanism triggering arrangement of the sites that will make me wake up tomorrow feeling as if Google is the one and only. Who knows? Maybe my next post will have me raving about Google or maybe I'll be raving about Bing. In the mean time though, I'm going to try to use them both to see if I can detect other differences between them.
I also found this interesting article about competition and rivalry between Microsoft and Google.
It seems Microsoft's interference has caused a problem for Google from foreign governments, something Ken Auletta posed in his book as a threat to Google's dominance.
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