Relevant Results: Jeeves vs. Google
Andrew's METAGUIDE #4 - October 18, 1999

There is more on the frontiers of web search than 'inventing a better search engine,' as I pointed out in my last column.  But the search engine metaphor, it seems, still clicks with the majority of consumers, to say nothing of the venture capitalists. To satisfy the seemingly bottomless thirst for that elusive ‘perfect search engine,’ several hot new engines have come out this year, and promise to keep the leaders on their toes. The hottest offerings in 1999 have been Google! and Ask Jeeves!  Let's compare them.

Complete objectivity?  The mind googles

Google! is a play on the word for a particularly gigantic number: a "googol".  Don't be fooled by the nerdy etymology.  This new search engine deserves its rapidly surging popularity. It's a snap to use and will delight novice and expert searchers alike.

Google was founded in 1998 by Stanford computer science doctoral candidates Larry Page and Sergei Brin. It's a kind of meta-search engine, but in a more sophisticated sense than other meta-search engines. Jakob Nielsen, a web usability consultant, has referred to search engines in Google's genre as reputation managers.  The Google algorithm is supposed to rank a site higher based on the number of links to it which appear on other sites. These links are weighted, in turn, based on those sites' own rankings on the same criteria. According to the Google folks, this measurement of a site's reputability based on an analysis of the whole structure of the web, taps into the 'democratic' sensibility of the Internet. The exact methodology is necessarily a mystery, but what is obvious is that the first Google result is quite often exactly the one you want, even though you've only typed only a couple of words into a standard search box. To put it succinctly: Google offers relevant search results; Google rocks!

A couple of concerns need to be taken into account should you be considering using this as your main search engine.  Google's reliance on an automated measure of 'reputation' may magnify the popularity of the biggest, most popular sites, and make it difficult for newer, high quality sites to be discovered.

The Google PR makes much of the fact that the search engine's methodology is "totally objective".  Sure, it's all done with a sophisticated series of measurements, but complete objectivity?  It's that kind of scientific hubris which has been getting the human race into trouble for oh, about the last 6,000 years or so.  But I see what they're getting at.  No annoying opinions about which web content is good, and which isn't.  Except, of course, for the annoying opinions of the Yahoo reviewers, Go Guides, Looksmart editors, and the hundreds of other subjective viewpoints upon which Google's algorithm probably piggybacks.  So much for science.

At the end of the day, the question of what counts as a relevant result or a quality resource is subjective.  Yes, measuring favorable mentions on favorably-mentioned sites is a pretty good filtering method.  But it's not foolproof.  A major issue may be ‘lag time’ or inertia. Older, more established sites may fare better, and this can become a vicious circle.  Some now-obscure pages buried deep in a major website's archives may rank too high.

No doubt Google's rapidly-growing engineering team is capable of solving mind-boggling math problems in its sleep.  But for all that, does Google really do that much better than a meta-search engine such as Metacrawler (which polls other search engines and returns the results in a handy format, based on an aggregate score), or a single directory such as the Go Guide (whose volunteer editors rate sites by quality, and whose recommendations must be approved by two senior editors)? You decide.  Many believe Google offers a significant improvement over many search engines, but that's about as far as it goes.

Another concern is that Google apparently only crawls the web every few months.  This may change in the future.  For now, webmasters should expect to see their new site or new pages lagging behind older web content in Google's rankings.

Google gets points for giving you relevant results without asking you to do any extra work.  Therefore it combines the best of both worlds:  laziness-of-use with noticeably relevant results.

Best of all, the Google site is devoid of advertising. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Overall rating: 2.5 stars (Very Good)

Ask Jeeves in your own words

Ask Jeeves! is another innovative search engine which is aiming at more relevant results. Jeeves' 'natural language question posing’ format is overrated, in my opinion.  The idea is clever, but in practice there is little advantage in using this format for most web search queries. Those who are used to typing a couple of keywords or a phrase to search will actually be stumped trying to come up with a "question" to ask Jeeves.

After you type in your query, Jeeves suggests several types of search you might pursue (corporate name searches, history, biography, terminology, and so on). Then you decide which avenue you feel is most appropriate.  He's the butler, and you're the boss. That’s quite clever, but the actual results you come up with are sometimes rather ‘dumb’.

Several competing search engines are now pursuing this concept of ‘meaning-based’ or ‘context-probing’ search – giving you options to pursue after your initial query. We’ll be covering these sorts of developments in upcoming issues of our newsletter.  What it basically means is that search engines can't possibly have enough information to go on just based on the words you type in.  The strategy is to try to get closer to the real meaning of the words you type in, based on a list of the most common alternatives, or just to get a better handle on what type of search you're doing.

Ask Jeeves should do well as a company, according to some industry observers, due to the niche they’ve found in licensing their technology for corporate use. The brainy butler's credibility got a big boost recently when it announced a deal with Microsoft to incorporate the Ask Jeeves technology into the online support for Windows 98.

Many companies like the idea of automating their customer service, and Jeeves may fit the bill nicely in this area. If Ask Jeeves focuses its energy on the corporate market (which might be a good business decision), its generic web search engine may not get the attention it needs to keep pace.

Because Jeeves asks you to perform at least one extra step in your search, as compared with one-step engines like Google, he should be held to a higher standard of relevance.  Since Jeeves is harder to use and not consistently superior in the relevance contest, a direct comparison seems to favor Google. It doesn't help that Jeeves uses frames to display the web sites which you choose to visit based on your search, which has the effect of 'trapping' you on the Jeeves site.  That's mildly annoying.

For the average web surfer, the clear winner of this battle is Google.  But this is in itself a subjective rating.  For those who like to monkey around with drop-down boxes and more elaborate searching, Jeeves has the potential to be more satisfying.

1999 has been a year of eyebrow-raising, and sometimes forehead-wrinkling, advances in web search technology.  As these technologies are refined, things can only get better.

Overall rating: 2 stars (Good)

In the next couple of columns, I look at the major portals’ strengths and weaknesses in the field of navigation and search. Included, of course, will be some impressions of the recently relaunched MSN Search.

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