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SALT LAKE CITY — Google and Bing are the two largest Internet search engines. What are their strengths and weaknesses?
Here, we break down Google in the first of a three-part series in which we will compare and contrast search engines. Today is an analysis of Google. Next Wednesday we'll break down Bing.
The third installment of the series will be an overview of many other (lesser-known) search engines.
Since Bing provides the search results for Yahoo, Yahoo will not be reviewed separately, although it is a commonly used search engine.
To compare Google and Bing, we will perform the same five searches on both sites. These five searches are designed to showcase different features of search engines.
What's the weather today?
Your eyes will quickly jump to the large, informative widget at the top of your search results when looking for the weather. Google has done a great job laying out aggregated results from The Weather Channel, Weather Underground and AccuWeather in an interactive widget.
Within the widget you can usually find all the information you are looking for. It allows you to see basic forecasts for the next seven days, accompanied by nice-looking graphics and charts.
Hopefully you can find everything you need in the widget, because the search results were either redundant or not applicable. At the top of the list were three results from Weather.com, none of which lead to a local forecast.
Below the three Weather.com links was a YouTube video explaining what weather is (not the intended result of the search), and a link to a local news station in Atlanta. Again, not the right answer.
Zippo lighter fluid
This search is an attempt to find a replacement bottle of lighter fluid for a Zippo lighter — either at a local store or online. This is used as an example of using a search engine to help you shop. Google did a good job with this one.
At the top of the search results is a link to buy replacement lighter fluid from Amazon. At the bottom of the page are links to local stores that sell it. Perfect.
In a step beyond the expected results, Google returned links and a video for "How to Refill Lighter Fluid in a Zippo," and even answered the question "What kind of lighter fluid can I put in a Zippo?" Google gets extra points for this — it has provided useful information that was not explicitly the intent of the search.
SLC to Washington, D.C.
To put it simply, Google's results when looking to book a flight are just what you would expect. Nothing special, but they're adequate.
The widget at the top of these results is not particularly helpful, but does offer a link to more detailed Google Flight results. Google kindly indicates which flights have Wi-Fi available, which can be nice for those who need to get work done while flying.
Within the Google Flights results, there are many things you can customize. For example, you can search only for direct flights on your favorite few airlines. You can also chose to compare ticket prices on a bar graph. While this looks pretty neat, it does not offer any further functionality over text-based results.
The links back on the search results page are good, once you get past the three nearly identical links to Expedia.com. There are results from a number of travel websites, each promising the lowest fare.
How to change a row into a column in Excel
This search is meant to test Google's ability to answer technical questions. Google does a very good job with this.
What stands out on Google's results, that other search engines lack, are the links to official Microsoft pages (the makers of Excel), located at the top of the list.
Below the results from Microsoft's own websites are many other good results from trustworthy sites.
When searching for answers to some kinds of "technical" questions, it can sometimes be hard to find well-written and well-thought-out answers. Frequently you will be directed to an individual's blog post about it, or to a forum that requires you to create an account to view. Google does a good job returning results written by professional tech writers, that are free to view.
The video results that Google provided also proved to be helpful and informative.
Another feature of Google Search that makes finding tech answers easier, is the ability to filter the results to show only Web pages you have already visited. This is valuable if you have researched the same question previously, and are trying to find the answer again.
Bryan Cranston
According to Google's annual list of most popular searches, searches for information and news on celebrities are very common.
A search for Bryan Cranston (an actor known for his role on "Malcolm in the Middle" and "Breaking Bad") pulls up Google's Knowledge Graph card. This card — located on the right side of the search results — is Google's collection of information on Bryan Cranston, compiled from popular resources like Wikipedia.
While the card does include some useful information, there are a few things wrong with it. Some of the pictures at the top show actors Cranston works with instead of being solely pictures of him. The links to the sources of the information displayed are rather small and hard to see.
The list of movies and TV shows that Cranston is in did not match the IMDB list of what he is known for, which would have been nice.
Besides the Knowledge Graph card, the rest of the Google search results were accurate and useful.
Results
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This experiment in searching demonstrated many places where Google Search does well, and a few places where it could improve.
The overall layout of Google is simple, and pleasant to use. Ads are well-marked as ads and are noninvasive. Many of the search results used in this article did not include ads at all.
Google did a great job with searches for weather, shopping items and technical questions, leaving room for improvement on searches for flights and celebrities.
Remember to check back with ksl.com Tech and Gadgets next week to see how Bing handles the same searches.
Taylor Wilson is an IT professional at a small Utah company. He has a passion for helping people with technology. Email: taylorwilson@testonetwo.com Online: www.testonetwo.com or twitter.com/twil6
