I pretty much think that Google is getting (mostly) everything right. I use Google 75% of the time. They seem to provide the best search results for the keyword phrases I’m searching on.

Ultimately, MSN might have a better algorithm . . . but at the end of the day, I dislike using their search engine. Why? Because it’s so darn vanilla. MSN Live is lifeless to me. The SERPs speak for themselves. I just don’t like looking at the pages and, personally, I don’t think they provide better results than Google.

Yahoo is a fine search engine but I find that it’s almost a bit too . . . “tweeny” for me. I do like their Yahoo! Answers service though.

I’m a bit disheartened by how each search engine is placing Wikipedia entries so high up in the search results. Wikipedia is an authoritative source… but is it THAT authoritative? I don’t personally think so. Now that the Wiki pages are ranking higher and higher, the amount of spam people are going to edit into those pages is only going to increase.

It’s funny though, how I characterize each search engine into a personality: MSN is too ‘serious’, Yahoo is too ‘playful’ but Google, for me, strikes a good medium between the two.

However, some might not want to rely on the “authorities” or whomever Google thinks are the authorities.

Also, I wonder how effective the algorithms are in detecting who is an authority. There is a lot more to that than the number and importance (another thing to be determined) of links pointing to a site.

In the end, the algorithm writer makes subjective judgements just as we SE users do.

Bob