Could anything be more unlikely than AlltheWeb becoming the search engine champion? AlltheWho? The current kingpin, Google, has become synonymous with search, to the point where its intellectual property attorneys have to police the use of “google” as a generic term for web search. And doesn’t AlltheWeb just regurgitate Yahoo results, along with its step-sibling and one-time search leader, AltaVista? Two things prompt this speculation: a new study by PC World, and my own experience with Livesearch from AlltheWeb.
First, the research. A new study by PC World (see Search Engine Shoot-Out) showed that for text searching, AlltheWeb and Altavista scored highest for accuracy, slightly ahead of Google and Yahoo. Microsoft Live Search was a bit farther back, and Ask.com scored even lower. Scores and comments are in the data chart. The scores of the top four contenders were close enough, and the sample size was small enough, that it would be premature to claim that Google is no longer the best text search engine. We’d also caution that in any test like this, there’s a lot of subjectivity in the design of the test and the scoring methods. What’s the relative difference between a target result appearing in the #1 spot vs. #2? Or just on the first page? Who’s to say that if the target result isn’t #1 that the actual #1 result isn’t just as appropriate? And choice of searches may make quite a bit of difference - for example, Google does by far the best job of deep spidering and indexing, in my experience, and searches that favor long-tail results will probably do better in Google. Any test of this type makes assumptions and decisions that search engineers can argue about forever.
Still, the fact that Google and the three Yahoo variants were all in the top cluster indicates that the search quality race is tightening up. And, while Microsoft still lags, they appear to be within striking distance if they can get their algo right and improve the depth of their index. But why might AlltheWeb be #1? We think that if AlltheWeb could get Livesearch right, it could be a competitive advantage.
I’ve been using Livesearch (an AJAX-driven search enhancement) on and off, and find it useful both for research and simplicity of searching. If you haven’t used Livesearch, the premise is simple. As you start typing your search term, it starts guessing what you are looking for by displaying a list of possible search terms, highlighting the term it thinks is most likely, and displaying search results for that term. It’s an interesting research tool for identifying related searches and also for showing its estimates of popularity. But, purely from a search standpoint, it’s useful and fun. First, it may take you to your intended search with less effort if it guesses right. Second, it may show you either related searches or a popular search with an additional word that may refine your search - both can be helpful. Third, you never have to click Submit or hit Return - it’s watching your keyboad input and constantly adjusting the display. So what’s not to like?
Unfortunately, Livesearch from AlltheWeb has some issues. It’s slow. It’s usually faster to type in the whole search term than to enter a partial one to see if Livesearch guesses correctly. On quite a few searches, the other suggestions don’t offer much, if any, additional benefit. It sometimes causes browser problems as it tries to keep monitoring your input. It’s not a great idea for very slow connections due to the number of page updates that take place in a session. We don’t know what’s happening on the server end, but we have to assume that scaling this product to mass use would present some real issues with server performance and bandwidth, since there’s a lot more going on than a typical “enter and submit” search. And, unaccountably, AlltheWeb hasn’t released a version of Livesearch that’s compatible with Internet Explorer 7.
It’s possible that Livesearch could get bailed out by increasing server performance and ubiquitous broadband connections. If so, we think AlltheWeb might have an interesting value proposition for Web searchers. (Of course, if it worked that well, we assume it might be made available across all of Yahoo’s search options.)
Does this mean Google is vulnerable? Not really, at least in any big way. They have market share and, more importantly, mind share. Not only do they have excellent text search technology, their other search offerings like blog search, image search, local search, etc. are strong. They even have a vaguely similar product to Liveseach - it’s in their Google Labs area, and is called Google Suggest. It works a bit differently than Livesearch, but no doubt could be rolled out with a pleasing interface if the idea of suggestions became popular.
Nevertheless, we’re happy to see a cluster of results at the top for search quality - this will drive innovation by all the players. Even if AlltheWeb doesn’t dethrone Google, their nipping at Google’s ankles will make the search giant run that much faster.
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