5th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards
The Search Engine Watch Awards recognize outstanding achievements in search via the web. The winners for accomplishments during 2004 are below:
Outstanding Search Service
Winner: Yahoo
Second Place: Google
Honorable Mention: Ask Jeeves
Best Meta Search Engine
Winner: Jux2
Second Place: Dogpile
Honorable Mention: Clusty & Mamma
Best News Search Engine
Winner: Google News
Second Place: Yahoo News
Honorable Mention: MSN Newsbot & Topix
Best Blog/Feed Search Engine
Winner: Bloglines
Second Place: Feedster
Honorable Mention: Technorati
Best Image Search Engine
Winner: Yahoo Images
Second Place: Google Images
Honorable Mention: Ask Jeeves Pictures & Picsearch
Best US Shopping Search Engine
Winner: Google's Froogle
Second Place: Yahoo Shopping & Shopping.com
Honorable Mention:
PriceGrabber & Shopzilla
Most SEO/Webmaster Friendly Search Provider
Winner: Google
Second Place: Yahoo
Honorable Mention: MSN Search
Best Search Ads Provider
Winners: Google AdWords
Second Place: Yahoo/Overture
Best Search Feature
Honorable Mention: Clusty's Clustering, MSN's Search Builder, Ask Jeeves Binoculars Site Preview, Surfwax LookAhead, Pinpoint Shopping Suggestions, A9 Search History, My Jeeves, My Yahoo Search, Google
Desktop Web History Feature, AOL Snapshots, Ask Jeeves Smart Search, Google OneBox Results, Yahoo Shortcuts
Best Specialty Search Engine
Honorable Mention:
Google Local, Yahoo Local, Google Scholar, Scirus, Citeseer, Librarians' Index To The Internet
How The Winners Were Selected
In March 2005, Search Engine Watch members were invited to nominate search engines in various categories for the 5th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards. They could choose from a list of search engines that Search Engine Watch editors thought were good for within a particular category or suggest new services.
After the nomination round, anyone subscribed to one of Search Engine Watch's newsletters was sent a special email allowing them to vote in the final round. Each person was only able to vote once using a unique voting URL.
Search Engine Watch editor Danny Sullivan and associate editor Chris Sherman made the final decisions about award winners. These were influenced by reader votes, though the final decisions over winners wasn't always the same as the voting. More details about how decisions were made are described in each category below.
Please note that in most categories, people were allowed to name both a winner and a second place choice. In the summary below, we'll refer to how the voting went for the "winner" of a category versus the "second place" vote as appropriate.
Yes, we know, it makes things confusing. However, we have found that by letting people make two choices, it is easier to see the strength of some second-tier services that might otherwise get drowned out.
Outstanding Search Service
This category recognizes outstanding performance as a single-source provider of web search and specialty search services.
Winner: Yahoo
Last year saw Yahoo roll out its own web search technology that our gut feeling says is on parity with Google. The fact that Yahoo hasn't lost tons of users despite switching away from using Google's results backs up our feeling. The relevancy is clearly satisfying millions.
Beyond web search, Yahoo has an impressive range of vertical search services. Yahoo Local was added last year, came out of beta quickly and has become a useful resource. Yahoo Images expanded its coverage. Yahoo Shopping gained new features. Yahoo News has always been a great resource and continued to be a solid performer.
Our biggest gripe with Yahoo is its failure to better disclose paid inclusion in its web search results. It would be an easy thing to do and would remove the fly-in-the-ointment that remains when discussing Yahoo. More on why it's an issue is covered here: Going Beyond FTC Paid Inclusion Disclosure Guidelines.
The issue is so serious to us that it very nearly cost Yahoo its winning spot this year. We ultimately decided that we'd still make Yahoo a winner with a warning that if changes aren't forthcoming, its chances to win next year's awards are in serious jeopardy.
Second Place: Google
Winner of the popular vote, gaining 76 percent of the votes cast, we ultimately decided Google's couldn't win the category given its failure to maintain Google Images. The company admitted in November of last year that its image database hadn't been refreshed for months. It then took two more months before correcting the problem.
As Google Images is one of only two major search services Google provides that's not in beta, searchers deserved better than this. Making Google the winner in the all-around search category after such a failure simply didn't seem fair.
If it hadn't been for this issue, Google would have tied with Yahoo as a winner in this category. The popular voting shows that many, many people still find it an incredible resource. Like Yahoo, it has a great range of strong vertical search services. We're concerned that press releases may be impacting the quality of Google News to some degree, but it remains an outstanding resource. The Froogle shopping search engine greatly improved over the past year, and Google Local is strong, as well.
While Google took second place in this year's awards, it's a top choice that anyone should consider, especially now that Google Images has been updated. If it stays on track, past four-time winner Google may be a winner again in this category next year.
Honorable
Mention: Ask Jeeves
Ask Jeeves was the third choice in the popular voting, gaining 4 percent of votes cast. When we asked people to pick a "second place" search engine, support was even stronger. Yahoo was the top second choice search engine, with 54 percent of votes cast. Google followed with 18 percent, with Ask Jeeves just behind with 16 percent.
On the strength of the vote, along with our own feeling, Ask Jeeves gains an honorable mention. We think Ask Jeeves has excellent web search, but it also has a range of good verticals compiled by working in partnership with others. Image, news, local and shopping search are all available. Strongly consider the service, when looking for a single-source search provider.
Other Comments: What about MSN Search? The service's new technology hadn't rolled out until late in 2004, and it reshaped its look, feel and offerings significantly as well. These ruled it out from being a finalist. For 2005, we expect it will pose good competition to the services above and is definitely worth a look from anyone now.
Best Meta Search Engine
This category recognizes outstanding performance in helping internet users meta search or gather results from many web search engines by using one single service. For examples, see the Metacrawlers area within Search Engine Watch.
Winner: Jux2
Just 2 percent of the 490 votes cast in this category went to Jux2, but we thought it deserved to win over the more popular choices. It provides a clean, simple way to see all the results from the most important major search engines. You can easily view what the big three crawlers of Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves agree on -- plus the results that are specific to each search engine, as well. There's no better way to understand the unique voices that each search engine speaks with.
Jux2 takes its name from initially juxtaposing results from Google and Yahoo. Ask Jeeves was later added, and we hope that MSN will be included down the line. We also wouldn't mind seeing paid listings being added to the service, perhaps in a right-hand column display. Paid listings can often be relevant to searchers as well, so we'd like to have them.
Second Place:
Dogpile
Dogpile was the clear winner in the popular vote, gaining 37 percent of the votes. Add in votes for sister-site MetaCrawler, which essentially is Dogpile in all but name, and the share goes up to 52 percent.
However, we thought a winning meta search engine should make it easy to pick and choose exactly which search engines you want to search against. At Jux2, this can easily be done right from the home page or saved as a permanent choice. At Dogpile, it's not an option at all, whether you use the advanced search page or the preferences option.
In addition, we also dislike the fact that sponsored listings are mixed in among the regular results. The paid listings are all clearly labeled as "Sponsored By," so there's no confusion on that front. But we'd like to see them physically segregated from the editorial results. For these reasons, Dogpile didn't make the winning spot this year.
Honorable Mention: Clusty &
Mamma
Clusty was a newcomer to meta search in 2004, though it comes from an old hand in the area, Vivisimo. Vivisimo has long run meta search on its site to demo its clustering technology. Clusty was designed to move past being a demonstration and into a site that can better help searchers every day.
We like the clustering options that Clusty takes its name from, as well as the clear distinction between sponsored and editorial results. We also love that you can permanently pick and choose which web search engines you wish to search against. Unfortunately, the collection doesn't include either Google or Yahoo, something we think would be essential to a winner in this category.
In terms of popular voting, Clusty drew 14 percent of the votes following Dogpile and MetaCrawler, a very strong showing for a new service.
Mamma lacks the clustering that Clusty offers, but it does have all the other things we like: sponsored listings segregated from editorial results and the ability to permanently pick and choose search engines. But like Clusty, it also lacks access to results from either Google or Yahoo. In the popular voting, it came after Clusty, picking up 9 percent of those cast. We thought that was strong enough to warrant an honorable mention, as well.
Best News Search Engine
This category recognizes outstanding performance in helping internet users locate news from across the web. For examples, see the News Search Engines area within Search Engine Watch.
Winner: Google News
Google News was the clear favorite among the popular vote, gaining 51 percent of the 623 valid votes cast in the category. We're awarding it winner status based on
the votes of our Search Engine Watch readers.
Second Place: Yahoo News
Following on with awarding according to reader votes, Yahoo News took second place, gaining 22 percent of the votes cast.
Honorable Mention: MSN Newsbot &
Topix
MSN News is a newcomer to the category, having beefed up its news search coverage in 2004. That showed with readers, who put it into third place with 17 percent of the votes cast.
Topix is also new to the space in 2004 and was a distant fourth place choice with only 4 percent of the votes cast. However, we think the service is important enough to warrant an honorable mention award.
Best Blog/Feed Search Engine
This category recognizes outstanding performance in helping internet users locate blog or feed content from across the web. For examples, see the News Search Engines area within Search Engine Watch.
Winner: Bloglines
This is a new category for the awards this year, and we decided as with news search to rely on reader votes for picking the winners. Ask Jeeves-owned Bloglines was
the winner, picking up 35 percent of the 345 votes cast.
Second Place: Feedster
Feedster took second place in the voting, picking up 22 percent of the votes cast.
Honorable Mention: Technorati
Voting put Technorati in third place with 16 percent of the votes cast, earning it an honorable mention award in this category
Best Image Search Engine
This category recognizes outstanding performance in helping internet users locate images from across the web. For examples, see the Image Search Engines area within Search Engine Watch.
Winner: Yahoo Images
As mentioned earlier, Yahoo Images greatly expanded its image database in 2004. And unlike Google Images, that database was kept fresh throughout the year. So while the
popular vote put Yahoo Images second, with 13 percent of the 622 votes cast in the category, we decided Yahoo Images deserved to win despite the vote.
Second Place: Google Images
Google Images was far and away the winner in the popular voting, gaining 76 percent of votes cast. But given its freshness problem in 2004, we couldn't ultimately let it
win this category. We'd stress, however, that Google has since said the freshness issue has been resolved. It remains a top resource that anyone searching for images
should consider.
Honorable Mention: Ask Picture Search &
Picsearch
Ask took third place in the popular voting, with 5 percent of the votes cast. Picsearch was just behind, with 4 percent of the votes. We felt both deserved to gain an
honorable mention. Ask is actually powered by Picsearch, though changes made just this month now apply Ask's own ranking technology to the Picsearch database.
Best Shopping Search Engine
This category recognizes outstanding performance in helping internet users shop for products from across the web. For examples, see the Shopping Search Engines area within Search Engine Watch.
Winner: Google's Froogle
For shopping search, we again relied on reader votes in giving out the awards. Froogle earned the most, 32 percent of the 464 votes cast, making it the winner in this
category.
Second
Place: Yahoo Shopping & Shopping.com
Yahoo Shopping and Shopping.com both tied for second place in this category, earning 19 percent of the votes cast.
Honorable Mention: PriceGrabber &
Shopzilla
PriceGrabber came third in the voting, with a 13 percent share. Shopzilla (formerly BizRate) was further behind with an 8 percent share. However, we thought the
service was substantial and important enough that it warranted an honorable mention as well.
Most SEO/Webmaster Friendly Search Provider
The idea behind this category is to allow readers to vote for the search provider that they feel does the best job of sending them quality "organic" or "natural" traffic with the least amount of work.
Winner: Google
We've traditionally gone with reader votes in this category and did so again this year. Google was the clear favorite, earning 59 percent of the 501 valid votes cast in the category.
Second Place: Yahoo
Yahoo came in second here, earning 22 percent of the votes cast.
Honorable Mention: MSN Search
MSN took third place with 14 percent of the votes, gaining an honorable mention.
Best Search Ads Provider
This category recognizes the best paid program providing guaranteed placement in search engine results.
Winner: Google
AdWords
Going with the reader vote, Google wins in this category, picking up 63 percent of the 452 votes cast.
Second Place: Yahoo/Overture
Yahoo's soon-to-be renamed Overture division picked up practically all the remaining votes, gaining a 29 percent share. However, as we said last year, we'd stress that anyone doing search engine advertising would be remiss not to use both Overture and Google. They have largely non-duplicated audiences and excellent reputations. If you are looking for the broadest reach and generally good conversion, you'd want to use both of them.
Other Comments: Other finalists gained so few votes that we didn't award an honorable mention in this category
Best Search Feature
This category recognizes the best feature offered by a search engine to help users locate information. No features were listed in drop-down boxes on
the voting form. Instead, voters were asked to write-in what their favorite features were. We received a range of responses and opted to award honorable mentions all
around, for items that stood out. They are:
Clusty's Clustering: Clustering was mentioned more than any other feature (10 times), with an additional six mentions being made specifically about the clustering feature at Clusty.com.
MSN's Search Builder: Honestly, relatively few people probably make use of the search builder tool at MSN Search that is especially unusual for offering ranking sliders, where people can adjust results based on factors such as freshness, popularity and closeness of match. However, clicking on the search builder link on the MSN Search home page does provide easy access to features buried on the advanced search pages of other search engines, such as restricting queries to a particular domain. And even if the relevancy sliders are weird and not likely to be used much, we still like the creativity and option to have them. Several of those voting mentioned the feature as well, so we're giving it an honorable mention.
Ask Jeeves Binocular Site Preview: Search engines have long grappled with whether they should show thumbnail images of web sites within search results. Such previews can be useful, but they can also be a burden to non-broadband users or others who may prefer textual results. Ask Jeeves struck a compromise by introducing its binocular site preview feature last year. Small binoculars appear below listings. Hover your mouse over them, and a preview magically appears.
Surfwax LookAhead & Pinpoint Shopping Suggestions: Google Suggest gained attention as a cool new way to prompt people for related searches, but Surfwax's LookAhead News Index and AOL Pinpoint Shopping both have offered similar features for longer. They both get honorable mentions. Google Suggest, out for only the last two weeks of 2004 and not yet implemented on Google itself, doesn't qualify for this year's awards. It will likely be a strong candidate for next year.
Search Memory/Personal Search Features: Honorable mentions going around to several companies for finally making it easier for us to automatically recall what we've searched for before: A9's Search History (review); My Jeeves (review); My Yahoo Search (review) and the Google Desktop Web History Feature (review) are all greatly helpful features unique to each service. If you use a particular service, explore these new features. All but A9's are still in beta, which is one reason why we didn't do a regular category for them this year. But next year, that's likely.
Direct Answers/Vertical Search Integration: Again, honorable mentions all around to several major search engines that added or improved features last year that make it easier to directly get answers right on a search results page or to more easily access specialized search results even if you fail to click the proper "tab" to make this happen: AOL Snapshots, Ask Jeeves Smart Search, Google OneBox Results and Yahoo Shortcuts.
Best Specialty Search Engine
As with the Best Search Feature category, voters were allowed to write-in what their
favorite specialty search engines were. Once again, we opted to do honorable mentions for several services that stood out. They are:
Local: Google Local & Yahoo Local
We decided against having a category for local search this year as both the major search engines of Google and Yahoo had their offerings out for only part of 2004 and in beta form for portions of that. But clearly readers are liking what they see. Write-in votes for local search in general or for a specific local search service totaled nearly 50 in all, more than any other category of specialty search.
OK, next year, we'll add the category! In the meantime, we're giving honorable mentions to the top named services of Google Local (16 mentions) and Yahoo Local (12 mentions). We like them both, ourselves. A9's new local service also got several mentions, but as it launched in early 2005, it's not eligible for these awards that look back on 2004. Similarly, Google Maps received a similar number of mentions, but as a 2005 launch, it's something we'll consider for next year's awards.
Academic: Google Scholar, Scirus & Citeseer
Google Scholar came out in late November 2004, such a short time for the period that these awards cover that it almost didn't seem fair to include for an honorable mention. But it was also the top named specialty search service, gaining 18 mentions. That tipped us toward deciding that despite the late debut, it deserved recognition.
Scirus is a long-standing science search engine especially aimed toward academics. We've honored it many times in the past, and it was one of the other top mentioned sites in the voting. For this, it also earns an honorable mention.
Citeseer's been mentioned as a write-in for past awards before, and it drew a number of mentions this year. We figured it was time for an honorable mention for this long-standing service that allows you to search through scientific literature.
Librarians' Index to the Internet
The Librarians' Index to the Internet has been around forever, chugging away at its mission of finding the best sources of information for librarians who help their patrons find the best information available. But don't let this deceive you - it's useful for any searcher, and has evolved into great, tightly focused directory. Its mission hasn't changed, nor has it done anything particularly earthshaking this year. Even though LII is a relatively small directory, all of its listings are first-rate sources that have been added to after considerable thought by the librarians who build and maintain the directory. As such, it's not cutting edge, but is one of the most useful resources around when you're sick of information overload and are just looking for some spot-on sources of information for a wide array of information needs.
Other Notes
Last year, we offered a Search Toolbar category. We decided not to repeat that this year. Every major search engine now offers its own search toolbar tied to that particular service and with features that often go beyond search. We wanted to give the category a rest, to see how things develop over 2005 to make toolbars more unique. It will likely return.
As for desktop search, we'll likely add this as a category for next year's awards. With most of the major tools out there still in beta, we felt it made more sense to let them mature before having them be part of the awards.
General Comments
The last question on the voting form allowed people to leave general comments. In addition, many of the comments for Best Overall Search Service were also often general in nature. Here's a sampling of these comments. Note that they aren't representative of any particular common view. We simply pulled out comments that were interesting in one way or another, so you could hear some actual voices behind the votes.
- I guess I really am a Google guy! I have tried a few other search engines but none seem to be as good.
- Ask Google why they continue to sell AdWords for Anabolic Steroids! I have written them three times protesting this and never received a response. That company is on
autopilot. Even the Titanic had a helmsman.
- Google continues to set the gold standard in search, especially as it is making significant investments to expand both searchable content (e.g. Google Print) while
retaining the purity of its search results (adverts still distinct from search results)
- This year I expect Yahoo to catch up more with Google as far as referral traffic.
- Most overhyped engine: Clusty (re-inventing something -- clustering -- which was not all that special when we first had it) Impending demise: the big directories
like Yahoo
- All of the Internet search engines are generally crummy. Maybe next year, have a couple of 'negative' categories, and/or have folks vote for the 'worst.' Whether the
results are published of not is a different matter. I am sure you will get interesting data.
- Google's listings have become flawed with affiliate and directory pages. Instead of finding the site I want, I find another site that has a link to it. Yahoo's
results seem to be cleaner and more direct.
- Google consistently provides the most relevant search results compared to other search engines.
- MSN for second place please; their new algo is superb, far better than Yahoo. Google win for being consistently great all year in practically every field
- Yahoo gives my larger advertisers options of larger partnerships, with more creative visibility and interaction with users. Google, or course, remains a contender as
the most cost effective ad buy on the Internet.
- MSN's new search would have topped my list -- but it didn't come into play until 2005. MSN was lean on fresh results in 2004 so it didn't get my vote. Yahoo wasn't
much better.
- A9 is very underrated and offers services that is directly suited for those doing long term research.
- I still find Google to have the most relevant results. When I don't like those results, I'll try Yahoo. Oddly enough, Yahoo's paid ads (Overture) are often the best
results. Perhaps there is something to be said for editorial review.
- Google's the king, but the crown is getting rusty
- Google is the standard.
- Google's results are not like it used to be -- they're really pretty bad and I haven't been able to find what I'm looking for. Yahoo, on the other hand, has improved
greatly.
- Yahoo is more user friendly to the average user than other search engines, MSN is also a great engine.
- Google used to be my SE of choice, but in 2004 their search results were all over the map
- Used to use ONLY Google, but a few months ago I noticed that a lot of my search results were less than desirable & there were also a lot of error pages. I started
using Yahoo & found the results much better. I still use Google, but am keeping my eye on Yahoo.
- Google is still the best. Google indexes new or greatly changed pages faster than any other search engine. When I change the content of a page or put up a new page,
it shows up in Google within a few days. This takes weeks or months in the other engines.
- Thanks for asking my opinion.
Thanks for giving us your opinions and your time in voting, all of you! It was greatly appreciated.
Thanks also to Jupitermedia staffer Aytekin Tank for help with our polling script, our newsletter production team for getting vote mailings out and staffer Donna Krivda for coordinating this year's logos and other aspects of the awards.
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Danny Sullivan was the founder and editor of Search Engine Watch from June 1997 until November 2006.
To contact current Search Engine Watch editorial staff, please click here.
Article Archives by Danny Sullivan
The Search Engine Report - Number 120 - Nov 30, 2006
The Search Engine Report - Number 119 - Nov 7, 2006
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