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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: December 12, 2002 You Are Here -- "The problem, of course, is that many search engines are ill-suited to discern what you're really looking for among the ever-expanding, Himalayan-sized mountains of data." (Comments: No one gives a crap about nifty technology. People want to enter keywords and get great results, end of story. By the way, the article mentions that the search arena is very competitive. I have a one word response: Google.)
Reader Comments...
Google has me disillusioned. More and more it fails to find what I need, causing me to concoct complex queries to weed out the crap that floats to the top. Sometimes I end up turning to any other engine to get an alternate view of the world. Posted by: Kent Sievers on December 12, 2002 01:39 PM
I'm a huge Google fan and have been recommending it to friends since it was 'beta', but Google isn't good for all kinds of searching. It's great for finding what I'd call 'definitive' sources of information. 'Definitive' in Google's case tends to be "free, publicly available resources that have been around for a while that lots of people recognize as good and link to." Google's not so good at very specific searches. Here's an example: what was your local daily rainfall this past summer and how does that compare to historical averages? The answer's out there, but Google isn't a lot of help finding it quickly. Google also obviously can't find secured information -- e.g. usability papers and research locked up in the ACM digital library. I just heard about a company creating a search tool for digital media. They convert text keywords to the sounds they make and then search audio, video or other similar media for matches. Search is not search, is not search. For based web keyword search for general resources, Google is "da bomb." Search IS very competitive, and I'd say Google is the leader in many types of search products, but that market has lots of opportunities left for new products and for improvement on existing ones... Posted by: Lyle - Usability Guru on December 12, 2002 11:30 PM
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