It's been quite a while since I've talked about search engines. MSN gives me a reason to address the subject again today.
For several years, Google has been the most popular search engine, capturing up to 48% of all searches. Their lead is so commanding that the term "google" has entered our vocabularies as a verb meaning "to search the Internet."
Google is followed by Yahoo!, MSN and AOL respectively in terms of the popularity of search engines. Because Yahoo! is the portal for so many Internet users, it wins the race for the more popular website, but Google comes out on top in the category of pure search engine.
If #2 tries harder, #3 obsesses more. MSN has apparently decided to challenge both Google and Yahoo! on the search engine front. This week, they unveiled their new and improved www.live.com search engine. And they have a feature that many users (including me) may find useful.
Most Internet users are familiar with the phenomenon of having a query come back with references to all kinds of things unrelated to what the user wants. As an example, if I type "Saturn" as my search engine query, I will get a mixed bag of references, including the car model, the planet and the Roman god. It's left to me to sort through the results to find the one I want, or to refine my query to "Saturn the god" at the outset.
The holy grail of search engines is a refinement by which the search engine, knowing my personal preferences, would be able to differentiate among the multiple meanings for the term "Saturn" and, recognizing my interest in mythology, give "Saturn the god" priority over other meanings for the term.
Google--usually known for its secrecy--has been very vocal in acknowledging that it is seeking to refine its system to the point where it could use its stored knowledge of a user's previous searches to select the meaning most likely to matter to that specific user. If it succeeds, Google would be able to recognize that I probably wanted the god Saturn, but my friend Terry, who recently bought a Saturn, probably is looking for data on the car.
This morning, I went to www.live.com and entered only the word "Saturn." I got the same mixed bag of results I would have gotten at Google--with a crucial difference. Off to the right (where Google runs its commercials), MSN has a column titled "Related Searches." When I checked those related searches, MSN had divided them up into categories. There were car searches, including separate listings for Saturn dealers, Saturn parts and the Saturn car model Sky. There was also a listing for the planet Saturn although not a listing for Saturn the god.
Think of this as a stepping stone in the direction of that holy grail of providing customized searches. While MSN is not able to offer me a search customized to my preferences, they are categorizing their results by type. To my way of thinking, this is a large improvement.
Let's see how Google responds.
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