Search Is FAR From Being Done

The dinner tonight was really fun. Renee and Paul Mooney put together quite a great group of more than 30 geeks. I can't tell you everyone who was there, but Jason Calacanis was sitting next to me most of the night and everyone sitting at the table was interesting. Anyway, I'm just doing my scanning of feeds. And I see I really don't know how anyone is going to satisfy Robert's request." It went downhill from there. His readers are ragging on me for not using more words in my searches (sorry, most people use only one word when they search, but as you'll see below, adding more words actually doesn't help much on many searches and often makes things even worse). And, worse, at least one commenter over there called into question my motives. Hey, I specifically pointed out a search where NONE of the engines are good (and where Google actually is better than us) and most of the searches actually made Google look good compared to MSN. Another fairly common argument is to ask me to go around asking other human beings "HDTV?" and see what they say. That's lame. We don't use search engines the same way we use friends. And, anyway, if I went into an HDTV store, I'd ask "do you have a list of HDTV manufacturers?" and they'd be able to provide me a list right away. At my camera store I had a list of all the camera brands. In fact, I often let customers see my wholesale catalogs. That info is out there, just not available in search engines. the Singularity is Near, for why. By the way, MSN gives a better result than Google when you search on the Singularity is Near. Here's same search on MSN. It was HDTV, right? I'm looking for the manufacturers. I guess Robertson's commenters didn't read my entire post. I also did searches for and and (all those are Google results, but you can do the same on MSN or Yahoo, they give similar results). Do any of those link to Panasonic HDTV site. Nor the Famous Robert I move up the list to #6. Ahead of Robert Capa, famous photographer and lots of other Roberts. Why do I point to such an egotistical search? Well, to demonstrate to you that search isn't very good. There's no way I'm more relevant to most of the human population for the word "Robert" than, say, Robert Redford. No one, including me, can make the claim that I belong at the top of the relevancy scale there. Do you want me to go on demonstrating more searches? I can go on all night. Search on: great sushi in San Francisco. Now, find me one sushi restaurant in the first 10 results. Just one, I ask you. No, there aren't any. You need to click twice to find any sushi restaurants and even if you click three times you aren't sure you are seeing a comprehensive list. Or search for the Police Stations in California would I get a list of those? Hey, top link is a TV station. Then something about Megan's law. Or, how about this one? I'm a little hungry. Can you find Robert. I'm #3 on MSN, but #1 on Google. Famous Robert great sushi in San Francisco Police Stations in California Reader Comments... Scobleizer blog. He works as Scobleizer