MSN Search is Better Than Google?

That’s the claim of someone that emailed me yesterday.

After reading his email and subsequent replies to mine, I decided to post. Any thoughts? What’s your search engine of choice, and why?
Here’s his original email -

Dear Sir:

I have been reading your pages with great interest.
One thing some expert on SE, like you, needs to do is to try and
determine which engine produces the most relevant results.

I am no MSFT lover, but I think they could win the SE war because they
*deserve* to — their results are far more relevant than Google’s for
most searches.

I know I am right, and as bad as MSFT is, they will win because they
have a better algorithm — once the word gets out. Google is fighting
them on MSFT’s own turf, but Google is ignoring its own bread and
butter. It is going to be fun to watch them self-destruct.

Best regards,
Clayton

To which I replied…

Good points Clayton, but right now, MSFT has quite a long way to go.
They include too many spam pages in their index, and they seem to
indiscriminately rank some sites very high that are nowhere on the
radar of other search engines, which really makes you wonder.

You think they really offer more relevant results? I’d like to see an
example, if you want to point it out.

That said though, they certainly have the resources to take over, but
I don’t know about their “deserving” it…If MSFT “deserves” anything,
they deserve to have lost out to another company like Google, which they
did over the past 5 years. It wouldn’t break my heart to see Google get dinged in
return though…

Scott

Then he came back with this -

Microsoft is a monolithic monstor that deserves to fail, but Google is
becoming an unfair gatekeeper of the Web. Google dictates what is
important in a way that is not impartial but favors Big Business, Big
This, and Big That..

Here’s an example search term, something we both probably are interested
in: Moore’s Law.

Working through the Google results, you quickly start finding pages
with very little content but all of the SEO tricks, intentional or not
on the part of the sites. And, compared to other search engines, one quickly
runs into sites for law firms named “Moore.” Google’s algorithm
favors sites connected with important commercial sources such as CNet,
Ziff Davis, Intel and other large organizations. These sites tend to
draw lots of incoming links but often have very little content, text or
otherwise. (However, Intel happens to be very informative.)

If Google is going to be the gatekeeper of the Web, serving as an
editorial filter, it is very sad that they are favoring commercial
interests. These interests already have enough entree to the public
mind, what with their huge advertising budgets and the controversial
concentration of newspaper, TV station, and cable ownership.

Microsoft’s high-ranked pages tend to be meaty and relevant compared to
Google’s. So do Dogpile’s, but they use better sources as well as Google.

If you try some comparative searches for your personal favorite
subjects, you might find that you will switch from Google as I am
doing. (Also, for many subjects Google Images is a better starting
point than regular Google.) What are relevant results is a subjective
evaluation, but it is worth doing for an expert like you, I think. You
probably want to know who is best, not merely who best explains the
relevancy of their algorithm. We humans are better than mere
algorithms. It is up to us to explain why our opinions are better than
algorithms and to convince others.

Best,
Clayton

And my reply -

Well I’m not committed to either one, so I just tried the “Moore’s Law”
search. Google shows nothing but the correct Moore’s Law info on the
first 3 pages, and so does MSFT. I dug not deeper, becuae people seldom
doo. If it’s not on the first page (mAYBE 2 or 3) then nobody’s going to see it anyway.

Google’s #1 result is Wikipedia, a free site. All 10 on Google page 1 are
articles, with only #10, pointing to PBS being commercial.

MSN’s # 1 result is actually Intel, a commercial site, so I’m still not
quite buying your argument. That said, whoever has the most relevant
results to what I really want is who I’ll use for personal searches,
and I’m sure Microsoft would love to see more people expressing views
similar to your own.

Mind if I put this on my blog? Then you can feel free to add more
comments there, and perhaps others will as well…

Scott

And finally, his last one -

GOOGLE

Result No. 19 on page 2 is about razor blades! What kind of algorithm is that?

If the subject was search engines, I am sure that you, Scott, would have looked at more than the first two pages.

Result 20 on page 2 is about (against!) the Ten Commandments.

The Intel site, result No. 3, is a redirect! Do you think your site could get the No. 3 spot on a redirect? Something is wrong with Google’s algorithm.

MICROSOFT

MSN http://www.live.com/?searchonly=true on moore’s law:

Number 1 is an Intel site on M.L. that, unlike Google’s Intel result, is not a redirect. Numbers 8 and 13 claim to be about M.L. but aren’t.
However, they are closer than razor blades (found on Google), as both claim to be about M.L. and one defines it.

Google has been at this game a lot longer, but I find that Microsoft Live Search has “moore” than caught up.

Microsoft has its monopoly, but Google has one in search and it is not justified by results. I am switching my home page from Google to Microsoft’s Live Search.

Best,
Clayton

With all that’s undoubtedly been written about Moore’s Law, you have to wonder…

Why DOES this page and this page appear on Google’s page two for “Moore’s Law”? Is it really just because the main domains (Economist.com & Slate.com) are considered highly “authoritative” by Google? (showing a Google Page Ranks of 9 & 8 respectively)
So does Clayton work for Microsoft? Even if he does, is he on to something here?