Why search engines listings should be better

[glennmid101]

Having seen all the search engine listings following the same format, i am surprised no one, espically anyone who wants to take on google, try and add value to the listing.

I know there is a space constraint, but offering to show a phone number, or a discount code as well, to me, would go along way, to entice the advertiser.

Sometimes i feel advertisers do get ripped off, espically as they keep so many people gainfully employed.

[peterjhale]

I guess Google et all are trying to make the results better.

If you search for "plumber your town" google displays 10 businesses on a map with their telephone numbers.

And of course Google is free (for the main results)

[JustOneUK]

There's just no one who seems keen enough to try and take on Google - although the market is worth BILLIONS.

[fisicx]

Isn't miscrosoft live search an alternative to google? Or you could always use ask, yahoo, dogpile, mamma, aolsearch, social networks, business directories, local directories and so on. Lots of alternatives to google if you look.

[bermuda]

Well, although there are some traffic alternatives besides Google, but they still offer the largest traffic share to people, webmasters, advertisers and so no wonder Yahoo, MSN and other web portals come afterwards in rankings.

[wecando.biz]

Google and most earch engines are actually pretty rubbish. They probably do as good a job as they can, but I can't help thinking that in years to come we'll look back on search engines and laugh. What?!! You went to a site and typed in what you wanted and then got 37,000,000 links back, only 20 of which you'd looked at and only 4 of which were relevant?!! But that they weren't business you knew anything about? Then why would you want to deal with them?

It is a bit stupid.

It has been suggested that social networks could kill search. Certainly, there is someting to be said for systems that more easily facilitate the sharing of information between friends, as you are more likely to be influenced by the bahaviour of friends than the few nuggets of relevance -- and then it is self promotion -- on search engines.

Speed up their demise I say! I hate them.

IH

[misch.chief]

I don't know - I think you being a little harsh on the SE's. Considering how much BS is out there, they do pretty well.

On the point of a competitor, I too am suprised nobody has made more of an effort to battle Google, but there are many other choices out there, it's just Google works the best and is the easiest to use.

In terms of getting better results, Google themselves are working on this universal results thing where they bring up useful data. If you type a film that is in the cinemas into Google, it will come up with an options to find the showing times at your local picture house! ASK have recently launched simular tools.

Mischa

[MrCat]

The SE's are always changing their algo so as to give its users better results. Although Google is still the dominant one - I use Yahoo more often as it seems (for me) to give out better results. One good reason for this may be due to the fact that Yahoo gives more weight on the opage factors of a site.

[erikko]

I can say yahoo's algo is better because they give relevant search compare to Google

[Bartlets]

In terms of search engines, google is the best and I have seen anything other than that....& we use to find each and everything through google...