Web searches

[Steve]

For those of you who haven't already noticed....

==========================

Search Sites' Shocking Secret

Jesse Berst
Editorial Director, ZDNet AnchorDesk


Search engines are the most popular and most important places on the
Web. Yet their press releases are about partnerships, portalization,
acquisitions, services -- about everything except searching. 

As if they want to distract us, so we won't notice three disturbing
facts about today's search sites:

They're very poor at their core job.

They're getting worse.

They're doing it deliberately .

Secret No. 1: Search sites are out of date and incomplete. They
can't keep up with the exploding Internet. And they're getting worse,
not better, falling further and further behind. And they can't even
sort out the pages they've indexed -- they've made little progress in
relevancy rankings, still using crude techniques from years ago. 

Secret No. 2: A mini-industry has arisen to "cheat" the search
engines. These companies use a variety of tricks to make a site show
up at the top of the search results page (whether it belongs there
or not). 

Secret No. 3: Many search sites are deliberately letting things
deteriorate. With a few exceptions -- Northern Light, LookSmart --
most sites are de-emphasizing search technology, spending the money
on marketing and advertising instead. 

Secret No. 4: Some search sites sell their rankings. Companies can
pay money to guarantee that its site shows up first when you run a
search on certain words.

Secret No. 5: Some search/navigation engines deliberately exclude
valuable sites from their listings. For instance, Yahoo boycotts
sites from The Mining Company, an upstart competitor. This is like
Republicans changing the Library of Congress card catalog to exclude
anything written by Democrats. The books are still on the shelves.
You just can't find them. 

Don't get me wrong. I believe search and navigation sites must
evolve. Click for full story. And I agree they've gotten better at
lots of things. At "channelizing" their content. At personalizing
their pages. At adding services and freebies. 

But they're getting worse at search. They don't take it seriously.
They don't invest enough in new technology. They don't resist the
temptation to sell and censor the results. Search sites are the
biggest, most popular, most profitable places on the Web. We depend
on them. And they're screwing us by neglecting their most important
job. 

Copyright (c) 1998 ZDNet 
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