The Search Engine Showdown

If youre anything like me, you have a favourite search engine and youre loyal to it. You never use any others which made this research difficult for yours truly, insist yours is the be-all and end-all and you even go so far as to deny any shortcomings it may have. But is your search engine truly the best Inspired by a great article at the BBC News BBC News: Search Wars, we decided to compare the major search engines. Heres what we found.

We chose the search term "real estate fiji" because its a competitive industry and geographically specific. We also searched with the same phrase, misspelled to see if the search engine would suggest the correct spelling.

Google

• Initially loading the search page for Google is lightning fast.
• The look is clean and easy to understand.
• Search time was 0.15 seconds.
• The search yielded 1,190,000 results.
• All results on the first page were relevant.
• Spellcheck was available.

Yahoo!

• Initially loading the search page for Yahoo! is a little bit slower than Google, but still fast.
• Search time was 0.18 seconds.
• The search yielded 711,000 results.
• It is difficult to tell the sponsored links from the actual web results.
• All results on the first page were relevant, however one of them directed you to another set of results for your search at DMOZ.org.
• Spellcheck was available.

AskJeeves

• Initially loading the search page for AskJeeves is fast.
• Search time was not posted and was much slower than Google & Yahoo!.
• The search yielded 63,100 results.
• Sponsored links take up the whole screen. You have to scroll down to see the web results.
• All first page results were relevant.
• Spellcheck was available.

A9.com

• Initially loading the search page for A9 is fast.
• Search time was not posted but was average.
• The search yielded 209,000 results.
• All the results on the first page were relevant.
• There were image results alongside the text results. This could be helpful.
• Spellcheck was available.

MSN

• Initially loading the search page for MSN is fast.
• Search time was not posted but was average.
• The search yielded 112,607 results.
• All except one of the results were relevant. This result pointed to Philippines real estate. Also, one the results directed you to DMOZ, where a second search for your keywords is performed.
• Spellcheck was available.

Alexa

• Initially loading the search page for Alexa was fast.
• Search time was not posted but was somewhat slow.
• The search yielded 208,000 results.
• It was difficult to tell the sponsored results from the web results.
• Some results included screen shots.
• The look was kind of disorganized.
• Spellcheck was available.

AltaVista

• Initially loading the search page for AltaVista is fast.
• Search time was not posted but was a sliver slower than Google.
• The search yielded 736,000 results.
• The sponsored results take up almost the entire screen. You have to scroll to get to the good stuff.
• The results are all relevant, though one redirects you to DMOZ, where a second search for your keywords is performed.
• Spellcheck was available.

Lycos

• Initially loading the search page for Lycos is fast.
• Search time was not posted but was rather slow.
• The search yielded 114,356 results.
• The sponsored results take up almost the entire screen. Once again, you have to scroll to get to the good stuff.
• All the results are relevant although 2 of them redirect you to DMOZ.org.
• Spellcheck was available.

Excite

• Initially loading the search page for Excite is slow.
• Search time was not posted but was rather slow.
• The search yielded 114,356 results.
• All the results on the first page were relevant.
• The look of the site was clean.
• Spellcheck was available.

HotBot

• Initially loading the search page for HotBot is fast.
• Search time was not posted but was fast.
• The search yielded 114,389 results.
• The sponsored results take up almost the entire screen. Once again, you have to scroll to get to the good stuff.
• All the results are relevant although 1 of them redirects you to DMOZ.org.
• Spellcheck was available.

AllTheWeb

• Initially loading the search page for AllTheWeb is fast.
• Search time was not posted, but was fast.
• The search yielded 679,000 results.
• It is difficult to tell the sponsored results from the web results.
• An offensive content filter was available.
• All the results are relevant although 1 of them redirects you to DMOZ.org.
• Spellcheck was not available.

Looksmart

• Initially loading the search page for Looksmart is fast.
• Search time was not posted but was rather slow.
• The search yielded 300 results.
• There were 3 completely irrelevant results on the first page.
• The look of the site was clean.
• Spellcheck was not available.

Jayde

• Initially loading the search page for Jayde is somewhat slow.
• Search time was not posted but was average.
• The search yielded 60,424 results.
• There were quite a few irrelevant results.
• The look of the site was clean.
• Spellcheck was not available.

So, whats the conclusion My favorite search engine is the best. All hail Google! ... Alright, alright, some of the others are pretty cool, too.