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I came across an article the other day that made do an "Is this really news?" doubletake. Technology-blog.com posted a story with the headline, "Google favored over other search engines." Well, no duh. I'm sure at least 50 per cent of people who use the Internet on a daily basis, don't even know there are other search engines and certainly can't imagine doing a search in the pre-Google world.

Looking at the article more careful, I realized it was talking about how people's robots.txt files interact with search engines. The robots.txt file exists on the root level of a website and contains information about what files should be ignored by bots looking to index content. This file's restrictions usually are to keep web spiders from gathering information. But search engines often use these spiders or bots to keep up-to-date listings, and it seems that bots from Google, MSN and Yahoo get preferential treatment from these robots.txt files on sites. This is a little surprising as you might think all search engines would be treated equally on this automated level, but the files are written by users and so the exclusions are a conscious choice that may stem from the reason I mentioned above.

Still, this gave me an idea. Maybe I should run some informal web search tests myself to see if Google still is king. Sure, at the time of its release, Google, for its indexing and organization of results, put it well above the competition in usefulness. But Google is much larger and more bloated now and so maybe it has passed its time. (I mean, if you type in "miserable failure" and click "I'm feeling lucky" you no longer get the White House biography for George W. Bush, nor does the Weapons of Mass Destruction 404 error page pop up anymore.)

So I've compared six different search engines, the leading ones, Google, Yahoo and MSN (or Live Search as it's now called) as well as a few lesser known ones, such as Clusty (which gives results in clusters) and two search engines that utilize the results from multiple other search engines, Dogpile and Metacrawler.

I was debating what exactly to use as the criteria for my test. I could obviously search for something frivolous such as a Lindsay Lohan nipple slip. But we are talking about the Internet here. No seach engine worth its salt would fail such a query.

So, then I thought about something more scientific, such as arteriosclerosis or the Wankel rotary engine, but then I realized that any search engine that indexed Wikipedia could come up with proper results.

Then it struck me, the perfect search term; myself! I'm not famous enough to have a Wikipedia entry but I do have a web presence. So I could plug my own name into the search engines to see what came out and then I could decide for myself what search engine treats me best.

When I type "Adam Swimmer" into the search, at first glance, Google wins. I get 479 entries, as opposed to 304 in Yahoo, 164 in Live Search, 122 in Clusty, 41 in both Dogpile and Metacrawler.

But Google's numbers are inflated. It counts many duplicate pages and although most of the Adam Swimmers that appear in the search are me, there are genealogy sites and a site concerning land transfer agreement that reference a Cherokee Adam Swimmer from the early 1900s. (I doubt there's any relation as my Grandfather came from Hungary and was not of Cherokee blood as far as I know. My surname is Swimmer because of a misprint on my uncle's birth certificate. So it's more likely I'm related to David Schwimmer than this turn-of-the-century First Nations namesake.)

But much of the results for all six are similar. They all have links to my stories for G4, Canoe, The Danforth Review among others as well as to my scant IMDb page and to my related gay porn fan page which inexplicably exist despite the fact, I'm reasonably sure I've never being in a gay porno.

They even all mistakenly reference articles on swimmer's ear.

But which one is best. Google has all of the links the other search engines have and then some with two big exceptions. One: In Clusty, although I couldn't find it again now because I believe the page no longer exists, but I once managed to find an article on a condominium development I wrote for my then college's online publication, The Toronto Observer, one which I could never find on Google. Two: Live Search is the only search engine that when I told it to search images was the only one that came up with a photo of me (my biography picture for this column). So kudos to Live Search for spreading my ugly mug around the web like a virus!

All in all, I guess Google still prevails. But its days may be numbered.

About G4 in Canada
G4 Canada (formerly TechTV Canada) launched in September 2001. G4 is the one and only television station that is plugged into every dimension of games, gear, gadgets and gigabytes. Owned Rogers Media Inc., the channel airs more than 24 original series. G4 is available on digital cable and satellite. For more information, see www.g4tv.ca.

Tech News on G4

I'm so vain I probably think this article is about me

November 21, 2007

By Adam Swimmer - G4 Canada