I am sorry for being late. For this blog entry I took Johnson-Eilola assignment #2. Maybe it is caused by my choice of words or search engines are getting better, but all first hits in the search results were relevant.
My first search was on “Christopher Columbus” (because I’m going to make a presentation about him in my Spanish class). Google found 1,720,000 entries. The hits start from Wikipedia. Most pages offer encyclopedic kind of information. An interesting page that popped up among those ten is “Christopher Columbus: A Culinary History”. Yahoo found 10,600,00 entries. The main top 10 list is almost the same as in Google. Unlike in Yahoo, there was no Catholic Encyclopedia in top ten in Google search, but it is simply on the page 2 there. Wikipedia is the hit number one in Yahoo too. There are many sponsored links on Yahoo that offer travel, essays on the topic etc. Ask.com found 1,647,000 and turned out to be very good in relevant offerings for narrowing my search. Top ten is nearly the same as in two former sites.
My second search was on “visual rhetoric”. Google found 1,290,000 entries, Yahoo - 1,700,000, and Ask – 404,000. Again Google gives Wikipedia as the first hit, it is also among top ten links given by two other sites. Mostly sources about definition, conferences and particular courses taught in the universities were found in all three searches.
Then I was looking for “apple”. Here it became interesting because in the Web this word obviously means the company first of all, and the name of the fruit is on periphery. Google: 320,000; Yahoo: 323,000; Ask: 66,070,000 found entries. Nine hits in each top ten refer to Apple Inc. with its software, stores etc.
On the one hand, I have not noticed such considerable differences between three search engines that would make me use more than one of them. That is probably why we “google it” – and then we usually do not need to “yahoo it” or anything else. On the other hand, different engines are better for different goals. For example, yahoo is more oriented on buying/selling things while Ask.com provides more guides for searching encyclopedic kind of information.
3 comments:
In response to the last part of Irina's post, I too found a lack of significant difference (at least ideological difference) between search engines. I wonder if this is a factor of google's increasing dominance? I wonder if, in the short time since Johnson-Eilola's article was written, search engines have changed that much? If that is so, it would make a case for online instructional material, rather than textbooks.
The technology has, indeed changed. I won't claim to be an expert on this, but essentially different engines use different criteria in order to rank websites. Up until recently, Google ranked according to the number of sites that had a link to an item. So, for example, that is how opponents of Bush were able to key the words "Miserable failure" such that they would lead directly to Bush's White House homepage, in spite of neither "miserable" or "failure" appearing on the page. (It's known as Google bombing, incidentally).
On the other hand, other search engines rank according to the number of times words occur, the popularity of the site, the number of times each has been clicked, etc. Depending on the search terms, the results may be slightly or dramatically different.
In a strange twist of irony, the search term "miserable failure" no longer links to the White House site from Google (they've changed their algorithm), but Yahoo still works. Fun stuff.
n response, I do actually see some slight differences between the three. Yahoo seems “generic” to me, while Ask can sometimes give you the run around. And of course, I am frequent user of google as many are. However, when completing assignment #2 I made some of the same observations as you. In response to Claire, I think it is a true example of Google’s increasing dominance over everything; just look at all the search options they provide. In response to Bri—slightly too much time on your hands ☺
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