Is Google Still #1? Excerpt from The Information Advisor

[Infoadvis2 at aol.com]

(cross posted: apologies for any duplication)

Greetings information professionals,

Below is an excerpt from an article in the October 2001 issue of The 
Information Advisor, which examined whether Google is still the premier 
search engine for business research. If there are questions or comments, feel 
free to call or email me directly at rberkman at aol.com.

The full article provides additional information on how we judged each of 
those search engines, including an evaluation of its features and interface.  
(Other articles in the October 2001 issue include: How to Pinpont Market 
Research on the Web; U.S. Governmental Sources of Official Data;  and a 
Discussion of Firms that Track Internet Discussion Group Conversations)

Robert Berkman
Editor
The Information Advisor
www.informationadvisor.com
Falmouth MA
508-540-5185
rberkman at aol.com

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(Excerpt from the October, 2001 Information Advisor)
IS GOOGLE STILL ON TOP?
 
Is Google still the best overall search engine for businesses? We've been a 
big fan of Google for quite awhile now, and we recently decided to take a 
closer look at how this current leader compares to a couple of challengers. 
We compared Google to two very new search engines that have received some 
good press: Teoma (recently purchased by Ask Jeeves) and WiseNut, as well as 
to an older, respected competitor, Northern Light. 

What would be the most important criteria that business information 
professionals want in a search engine? We'd venture to say that it would be 
one that offers the following, in order of importance:

+   Consistently returns relevant, substantive results in first 10 hits
+   Offers flexible advanced search features, specifically:
+       Phrase searching
+       Boolean operators
+       Field limits (e.g., restrict search to title or URL)
+       Date limiting
+   Option to focus search on business-related content
+   A clean, uncluttered search page
+   Useful extras that streamline and improve the search process

>From five searches, and 50 pages examined, we calculated scores for each 
search engine as to how many of those 50 pages we judged to be relevant and 
substantive:

        Relevant/Substantive
Google          34/50
Northern Light  27/50
WiseNut     25/50
Teoma           11/50

For the second criterion, advanced search features, we found a tie between 
Google and Northern Light, both of which provided extensive advanced search 
features and limits. We placed WiseNut third (which defaults to AND, and 
utilizes the plus and minus signs), and Teoma last, which has no advanced 
searching. The big problem with Teoma is that not only is there no Boolean or 
field searching, but you have to choose whether all of your words entered are 
to be searched on as a phrase, or none at all. This is a major drawback, 
preventing you from combining single words with phrases, and has much to do 
with why Teoma did not do well in our first test. 

Next, we looked at whether each search engine has substantive 
business-related content. In an ideal world, business researchers would be 
able to search a set of all substantive business-related content on the Web. 
But this is technically impossible, and presents nearly insurmountable 
problems of defining what exactly should be considered business content. 

However, we commend Northern Light for its worthy attempts to distinguish at 
least some of the business Web, with a variety of options under its "Business 
Search" feature.

Specifically, Google remains the only search engine to:

*   Index PDF documents, which are more likely to be substantive than a 
typical Web page
*   Offer a cached copy of its indexed page, allowing you to view a page that 
has moved or has been taken down since it was indexed (and, you can still 
click on the links in the cached page)
*   Show you all of your terms and phrases in bold and in context in the 
initial listing, making it much easier to see right away whether a page is 
likely to be relevant 

Our final determination  is that Google remains the leader, not just for 
general searching of the open Web but also for business searching as well. 
Northern Light remains in second place, but is a very worthy number two.

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*
The Information Advisor, (http://www.informationadvisor.com) is an 
international monthly journal founded in 1987, is a guide for information 
professionals who rely on its articles to help them identify, compare, and 
select the best business sources from the myriad of information products and 
services available, whether in print, on a professional database or on the 
Web.

Readers include business librarians, information brokers, market researchers, 
knowledge managers, competitive intelligence professionals and other hands-on 
researchers and information specialists. The October issue is available to 
non-subscribers for $20. Contact Ms. Sonia Bedikian at (212) 633-4539 or at 
sbedikian@
findsvp.com for further details.

Also published by The Information Advisor is the "Best of the Business Web" 
E-letter, a free monthly e-mail alert identifying the five best business 
research sites found by the editor every month. To sign up, visit: 
www.bestbizweb.com.

The Information Advisor is published by FIND/SVP, Inc. the global business 
advisory, research, and consulting firm (www.findsvp.com)