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I’ve long loved Technorati,

February 8, 2005 by Michael Boyle

I’ve long loved Technorati,

but lately it has been confusing me. Typical problem: I use a favelet to do a search, but the results I get are far from what I would expect. Take for example a Technorati search for maps.google.com – an apropos search considering it was launched yesterday.

Well, the results I got just now for that search indicate that there are only 17 links from 11 sources – clearly incorrect. Furthermore, I have asked and otherwise verified, and there are many people who I know ping Technorati AND who posted about Google maps over 12 hours ago but who don’t appear in the results anywhere.

The confusing thing is that it’s a crapshoot. Sometimes – I’m not sure under which conditions – you get a partial list with a link to get a full list of results. Other times you get a long list of results the first time, with no such link. Yet other times you get very very short lists of results – but also with no prompt to get a more complete set of search results. And then when you do look at the results, there are multiple identical links listed, one after the other, and the count at the top doesn’t add up.

I really enjoy the service in theory, and love the direction they’re heading, and it’s obvious that there are some very smart folks over there who really care about the web. But I wonder if Technorati isn’t much more promise than delivery at this point, way more so than most people – commentators – seem to admit.

Tags: Search, Technorati

MSN Search Update

November 12, 2004 by Michael Boyle

MSN Search Update

I re-checked the search I put the Beta MSN through yesterday and interestingly – expectedly – it included more returns than before – though the total was still just 10% of Google’s number and no more relevent. But I think it’s important to guage how MSN and a couple of the others change over time. I think people have an instinctive feel for Google by now, but a new entrant like MSN Search should be given the opportunity to improve over time, to get up to speed, so to speak. Anyhow – over the weekend I’m going to write up 3 or 4 queries and develop a schedule to see how each responds and compare the results. I’ll include Google, MSN Search Beta, and Yahoo! Search. Any suggestions anyone can offer will be more than welcome.

Tags: Google, Microsoft, Search, Yahoo

It looks like MSN Search

November 11, 2004 by Michael Boyle

It looks like MSN Search

is on now, so a comparison is possible. I thought I’d compare using a very relevant search using the terms “alberto gonzales” at the senate.gov site. The results from MSN were shocking in their sparseness – it only returned 6 hits. The results from Google turned up 112 hits. Just in case, I used the graphical tuners to make sure MSN wasn’t just presenting me with a subset based on my initial (default) settings, but that didn’t change anything. From where I sit, turning up but 5% of the results is quite a failure for the Microsoft search.

Tags: Google, Microsoft, Search

Public Beta:

November 11, 2004 by Michael Boyle

Public Beta:

the new MSN Search. Doesn’t seem to be working at the moment, but this is supposed to be a big improvement. I’m not holding my breath though.

Tags: Microsoft, Search

The big news of the day

October 14, 2004 by Michael Boyle

The big news of the day

is from Google, which has announced the Google Desktop Search application. John Battelle has the story.

Tags: Google, Search, Software

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