I got a funny idea today that will help determine how search engines like Google, MSN, and Yahoo really rank themselves and each other. For each of those three search engines I did a query for “search engine” and also for “search.” Here are the results I received:
Google:
|
searching for |
searching for |
|
| 1. | google.com | search.msn.com |
| 2. | search.msn.com | google.com |
| 3. | google.co.uk | yahoo.com |
| 4. | altaVista.com | search.com |
| 5. | a9.com | excite.com |
MSN:
|
searching for |
searching for |
|
| 1. | search.com | scholar.google.com |
| 2. | searchenginecolossus.com | altavista.com |
| 3. | searchenginewatch.com | google.ca |
| 4. | submitexpress.com | search.com |
| 5. | ask.com | search.org |
Yahoo:
|
searching for |
searching for |
|
| 1. | dogpile.com | search.com |
| 2. | altavista.com | altavista.com |
| 3. | hotbot.com | overture.com |
| 4. | webcrawler.com | ussearch.com |
| 5. | lycos.com | careerbuilder.com |
I’m not sure if you are as shocked as I am at these results. Out of the bunch it looks like Google does a good job of making sure they appear in their own results and they appear towards the top.
Yahoo did offer a link above the first search result that said “Search The Web” when I did the query for ”search.” They didn’t, however, appear in the top 5 of their own results.
MSN definitely appears to be the worst and they obviously place a lot of weight on the keywords appearing in the URL. A little too much weight in my opinion.
The thing that really strikes me is that everyone is so caught up in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for certain keywords but it looks like the search engines themselves don’t care too much. Heck, most of them can’t even optimize themselves for good placement on their own search engine!
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Tags: Web Sites
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Or could it be that as you are already on their website, they wouldn’t need to attract you to it???
You could be right. However, when I query “search engines” on Yahoo they show themselves as the number 9 result. So they are still showing themselves just not at the top like I would think.
Tree won’t eat its own fruits.
This is fascinating - an excellent way of showing just how each search engine operates. It’s surprising how much weight MSN gives to the keywords in the URL, although I suppose all search engines do this to a certain extent.
Well, looks like MSN has changed its algorithm recently, and it is now placing more weight on the link popularity like Google.
So now if you search for “search engine” on msn, the top 5 results are
SubmitExpress.com
Ask.com
beta.search.msn.com
search.com
7search.com
but they still give importance to the keywords in the title and url
It would be like advertising your own site on your own site… what’s the point?