So, being the tech nerd that I am, I'm sitting here trying out the new & improved Google, Google Caffeine, instead of doing what others would surely term "more useful things" (like cleaning my room. Ahem. Anyway.)
But as of right now, I don't really get the hype. I ran searches in both Caffeine, the regular google.com, and my (heavily customized) google.ie. And, really I didn't see that much of a difference. Here's some of what I found.
Search: "stargate movie"
Number of Results: Caffeine~ about 5 million, Google.com~ about 1 million, Google.ie~ about 4 million
Time for Search: Caffeine~ .16 seconds, Google.com~ .45 seconds, Google.ie~ .12 seconds
Most Useful Results on First Page: probably Google.ie. The first 6 results were the same in all searches.
Search: "queen rania"
Number of Results: Caffeine~ about 7 hundred thousand, Google.com~ about 4 hundred million, Google.ie~ about 1 million
Time for Search: Caffeine~ .23 seconds, Google.com~ .15 seconds, Google.ie~ .48 seconds
Most Useful Results on First Page: probably Caffeine. Although it's interesting to note that Caffeine was the only search that didn't give image results, it was also the only search to give the Queen's facebook page in the top ten results.
Search: "blondie"
Number of Results: Caffeine~ about 10 million, Google.com~ about 9 million, Google.ie~ about 9 million
Time for Search: Caffeine~ .19 seconds, Google.com~ .18 seconds, Google.ie~ .36 seconds
Most Useful Results on First Page: probably Caffeine. It also featured a "news" results section, unlike the other two searches.
Search: "iran presidential election 2009"
Number of Results: Caffeine~ about 15 million, Google.com~ about 30 million, Google.ie~ about 30 million
Time for Search: Caffeine~ .23 seconds, Google.com~ .30 seconds, Google.ie~ .34 seconds
Most Useful Results on First Page: I would say it's a tie between Google.com and Google.ie. Caffeine's results were, I think, a bit substandard here.
I know it's nowhere near as thourough a job as someone who was really serious about finding the little picky differences, or who was reviewing Caffeine for a serious newspaper would do, but it's enough for me. I'll be glad of the update, certainly, although to be honest search technology is one of the things I pay less attention to in the computer-world. So is Caffeine faster? Sometimes. Is it better? Eh, again, sometimes (but when it still takes less than a second, most people aren't really going to care/notice xD). It's not a huge new update, but it seems nice enough.
On the topic of search engines, has anyone tried this BlindSearch webpage? It lets you run a query through the site, and returns the results from Google, Yahoo, and Bing searches, then gives you the results in three columns. Without telling you which column is from which search engine. Then you pick which column you think gives the best results, and then it will tell you what search engine each column is. So either my anti-Microsoft bias is giving me the ability to somehow know which column is Bing, or Bing really is not a great search engine, because I've probably tried 25+ different searches, and have never once picked the Bing results. Quite funny, actually.
Apparently I can only hide from room cleaning for so long. This is all for today, but check my website for more Stargate Atlantis reviews, and check here again on Wednesday for the latest Warehouse 13 review!
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