I decided to ask both search engines a series of questions to compare their performance. I'm going to summarize my results here rather than provide screen shots. I know most of you will think these questions are easy; please consider that the ease or difficulty of answering a question may be a matter of perspective. After all, until recently, how many people outside of the field had even heard of SEO?
??What is search engine optimization?? Both Google and Answers.com provided the right answer to this question in the first sentence of their results. In Google's case, the sentence came from a snippet from the first hyperlinked web site.
??Where is the Blarney Stone?? Again, both Google and Answers.com quickly return satisfactory results. It's worth noting that Google's snippet, this time, came from Wikipedia. For some reason, Google provided only the metric measure of the distance from Cork, while Answers.com gave the distance in miles.
??When is the next Fringe Festival in Scotland?? This question required the search engines to recognize several things at once: dates, the name of a festival, and location. Again, both performed similarly -- with a list of links that might or might not be relevant. Google's links seemed a little more recent. Answers.com provided related links that at least seemed intriguing; as I had observed earlier, it's a good engine for browsing.
??Who first said ?Time flies like an arrow fruit flies like a banana??? This question required the search engines to recognize a quotation. Google gets points for bolding the quotation in all of the results it returns, but Answers.com wins conclusively by identifying Groucho Marx as the originator of the quote before one even clicks through to any results (though to find the actual quote itself, I had to scroll down a ways).
??How are Venetian masks made?? Google's first result for this query was from Wisegeek.com, and it answered the question ?What are Venetian masks?? Though that's a different question than the one I asked, when I clicked through to the site I found that the fourth paragraph gave a quick description of the process. Answers.com didn't do as well; I got results from WikiAnswers, which told me what Venetian masks are made of (plaster of Paris or china), but that doesn't really tell me HOW they are made. If I was trying to make a Venetian mask myself, clicking through the results returned by Google gave me more useful information than clicking through Answers.com's results.
I would be very interested to see what kinds of results other users get, but I must admit I was a little disappointed in Answers.com. I won't rule it out for use when I'm in a mood to browse topics related to my specific query, but except in one case, it did not outperform Google when it came to answering my questions. If Answers.com's goal is to beat Google, I see a long road ahead. I believe it makes more sense for the company to serve as an information portal, but even with that more modest goal, Answers.com will need to do some work; drawing answers from a wider range of trusted sources would not be out of line. I wish them luck.
Google on the submit site page also states: ?We add and update new sites to our index each time we crawl the web...We do not add all submitted URLs to our index.?
I know that the two giant search engines are not telling you not to submit your website to be indexed by their crawlers, but they are definitely telling you that it is going to take much more than submitting your website to be in the search results. Furthermore, investigating the two statements you can understand that submitting your web site to their crawlers might not make any difference!
I am not trying to stop you from submitting your website to MSN and Google, if you have it in your system and just want to do it, just do it! I still don't think that submitting to search engines hurts your website, but I definitely believe it will not benefit your website at all. It also takes a couple of minutes so why not just do it and get it over with? I'll tell you! The purpose of your website to be in any search engine's database is to be in the search results when your content keywords are searched for. Logically, if submitting to search engines does not lead you to the purpose in the first place, then it is with no doubt the wrong path! Not to mention that it would be a waste of time and maybe money!
MSN and Google are not the only two search engines out there! In fact, if you are a website owner or in the process of getting a website, you might already have received a solicitation to submit your website to thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of search engines to increase traffic to your site. WORTHLESS!
Respected crawlers such as MSN, Google and Yahoo (the engines that send over 90% of website traffic) are now smart enough to find your website, even before you want them to crawl it! I have seen domain names appearing on Google results after starting to work on test pages of under-development web sites that are not decided to be in search engines yet (Note that this can easily and must be avoided!) .
Search engines are attracted to website content, they take this content and apply every technology available, every useful idea, and now even the behavior of your visitors towards your content to compare and rank your website. (Website Content has been mentioned more than two times in this article ? because the purpose of this article is not to speak about content, you should note the term for further excessive research if you intend to be in search engine results!).
To succeed in your search engine optimization project you must do some work researching how search engines work, this procedure might at the end save you lots of time of working and then re-working. Search engines are software after all! This software takes the content on your website and analyzes it. Analysis is done differently on different search engines, and hence you see different results for the same keyword on different search engines. The keyword typed into the search box is the key that starts the whole process. After that the software behind the search engine tries to guess which website has the most appropriate result for the search term (the keyword/s). This guess does not come from vacuum, but from hints that your website offers to the search engines. These hints could be the website text content, image alts, title tags, description tags, keyword tags and more. As technology develops search engines are also becoming smarter.
In the near future search engines will be much smarter. They will be able to read text in images and videos, and I have no doubt that in the near future they will have the ability to read sound and translate it into searchable text.
The point here is to always keep track of how search engines work and how they develop, advance and evolve. Familiarity with this knowledge will help you optimize your website so you can see your website in search results.
Both Manoj Kumar Mittal & Hassan Sayed are contributors for EditorialToday. The above articles have been edited for relevancy and timeliness. All write-ups, reviews, tips and guides published by EditorialToday.com and its partners or affiliates are for informational purposes only. They should not be used for any legal or any other type of advice. We do not endorse any author, contributor, writer or article posted by our team.
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