It’s why I started using Google in the first place in ’99 — their results were infinitely better than Yahoo’s at the time. I don’t want to waste my time wading through useless results.

Anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how things go with google in the future.

Thanks for the comment. I agree that semantic search results are useful, however, I don’t think that it is quite ready for a general audience, and that might soon change. I also think that there is a place for niche or vertical engines such as the one suggested, but it is also limited only to the topical areas.

I agree that SEO strategies are dampening the relevance of results in Google and think that vertical search and (even more importantly) semantic search engines, are the way forward for attaining the most useful results.

Even though MSN and Yahoo have slightly less commercialized results, they still fall a long way short of those on verticalized semantic search. I believe on Michelles post earlier she referenced one of the engines http://www.searchsupplychainlogistics.net

There are others too.

Thanks for the comment. I think that there are some that are working very diligently to find the secret sauce to getting to the top quickly, however, I don’t see it being a viable long term answer to marketing online. I think that if you offer something that the user wants, the engines will want to send them to you, because it speaks highly of the relevancy for their results.

Thanks for the comment. I would have to agree that the engines are really focused on what is readily accessible and ready for mass consumption. I think that a lot of effort is still need to become more relevant to local areas not represented online.

MSN/Yahoo etc. could have went much ahead but they are way too busy in tring to compete instead of making their site easy to use and provide accurate results. Everyone is busy optimizing their site for google and not for any other SE and google is taking advantage of only this.

I hope some day there will be something better. For eg. I am searching for something in my local area but I am getting websites which does’nt even belong anywhere near to that area even when i am using the local earch engine. Is pointless.

Thanks for the comment. I agree that the commercialization is what keeps Google running, actually it is the life blood of the engine. Relevancy is a qualitative, not a quantitative means, meaning that it is not measurable through a mathematical or algorithmically. So, relevancy is in the eye, or mind, of the searcher, not the other way around.

You make a good point about users being content with their particular engine(s).

As far as relevancy from web sites, I think that this is not relevant to the topic. Spam is spam, not SEO or any other, just plain SPAM! The concept is for search engines to remove this from their index. I agree that publishers should continue to stay relevant.

Thanks for the comment. I don’t think that Google is ignoring the idea that relevancy will drive users away, but at the same time, they have to keep a balance. The commercialization concern is noted, however, they also have to have relevancy there as well to keep the clicks coming to pay for their efforts.

And even as we type Google is increasing share yet again in the last quarter so they must be keeping the masses happy.

Maybe relevancy can land in the lap of web site owners and create relevant content that is real and not just SEO spam

I enjoyed this post. Very good data and interpretation of such. Thank, I got me thinking.

DPG

Thanks for the comment. Vertical engines absolutely have a place within the relevancy of the Internet, they stay laser focused and are useful to their target audience. The biggest challenge, which I have first hand experience, it is a big challenge to keep adding additional content to these types of indexes. This is the biggest limitation of vertical engines. I helped build a travel search engine for websites, not a booking engine like kayak and others. Sending our spiders to relevant content was the biggest challenge. I think that there are some very good niche directories that could or would fill this hole as well.