November 8, 2006

In The Election Results Race, Yahoo's The Winner

Like many Americans, I wanted to know what was up with the vote in the US midterm elections this morning. As a search analyst, I then wanted to know how the search engines performed in helping me find out. The results are in! Yahoo's the winner by far, but I'd still take the New York Times over it. Come along for an illustrated tour.

Google told us last month that Google Earth was all geared up to be an election guide. That's great if you've downloaded Google Earth and wanted to learn more before the election. But how about a quick, fast summary of what happened yesterday? What's Google got for us?

The Google home page is as minimal as always, no help there -- not even a special logo as in the 2004 race.

How about a search for "election results," which I think is a fair query to try. After all, using Google Trends, I can see a huge spike for that term after the last elections in the US:

I also checked the volume for just "results," and that was even higher whereas "elections" was much lower (see them all compared here). So my two queries for this test were "election results" and "results." On Google, both disappointed.

Here are election results on Google:

CNN's top with 2004 results! I know -- web search is always behind the times. That's why Google inserts that big news results OneBox unit above the regular results. Let's click on the main news link there, which takes us to news results:

Pretty bad. News about the dollar, stock prices -- but who won?!!! I've got to really work to figure this out, especially compared to the New York Times, as I'll show at the end of this story.

Maybe I head to the actual Google News home page:

Nope. I get some headlines telling me about the Democratic house victory, but it could be much better.

FYI, checking on a search for just results, I don't even get the news headlines inserted. Overall, I found Google to be a pretty poor resource.

How about Yahoo? The home page there immediately gives you some news:

If I actually gravitate to the picture and resist the pull of the search box, the "Full elections coverage" link takes me to a Full Coverage page with lots of info, including an interactive results page (my link takes that out of the normal pop-up box, but it still works great):

This is very, very nice. I can see at a glance who is ahead in the race for control of the US House Of Representatives, plus with a click I can check out the Senate or governor races. Selecting any state also gives me the information about races with that state.

I love this. It very similar to what impressed me at the New York Times. I hope Yahoo searchers found it. However, I suspect many bypassed it. To understand why, let's do that search for election results:

Similar to Google, Yahoo inserts a big "News Results" shortcut unit above the regular results, to help detour searchers into the freshest results. Of course, searcers might bypass that. If so, unlike Google, Yahoo has managed to get the CNN 2006 results page up rather than the CNN 2004 page. Nice. After that, there's Fox News 2006. But c'mon -- Yahoo's own special election results are third. This is one case where I'd totally applaud a little hand manipulation to get that to the top, especially to highlight that interactive results summary page.

Still, the web search results for this particular day at Yahoo far outshine Google. That's almost certainly due to some human editing, which is fine. Along with the sites I've mentioned, you get the New York Times politics page, USA Today's politics page, C-SPAN's 2006 results page, the ABC News politics page, CBS News's 2006 page, politics from the LA Times, then the Washington Post's 2006 results page. All of these are excellent choices. If Yahoo did human intervention to make this happen, kudos to them. You can check out a snapshot of the entire page here.

Over at Google, nothing is either timely or general enough. The Virginia state election board, California election info, assorted things dating from 2004 -- then oddly Virginia and California get another bump for their 2006 pages. Ugh. See the entire list in the snapshot here.

What happens if we detour into the news area that Yahoo promotes at the top of the page? Disappointment:

Yes, relevant news stories. And the image results to the side are kind of fun. But some hand help could have made a difference. How about a promo for that awesome election map of Yahoo's?

Let's go over to Ask, where I had high hopes. Ask has made a big deal of its special Smart Answers for the election, and they are cool. But will I see them? Yes, if I search for election:

I'd also get to this box if I went to the Ask home page and clicked on the Election Day link there:

But for election results (what I believe to be the more popular query), all I get is a small news unit:

The news unit will take me over to some news results, but like Yahoo's, these aren't thrilling. It's pick and choose through what you want, rather than any type of easy overview. As for a search on just results, that doesn't even bring back the news unit at all.

The overall web search results, similar to Google, are underwhelming. Nothing really helpful for the 2006 results pops up (see the full results in the snapshot here).

Even the special Smart Answers box, had it shown up, isn't that helpful for what I want now -- RESULTS! None of the featured links with it takes me to results.

Microsoft, what have you got for me at Windows Live Search? On the home page, nothing. For search on election results, it's disappointing old or non-targeted results (screenshot here). Unlike the others, there are no news results inserted above these. A search for just results is no better. If I specifically try a news search for election results, as with the others, there's no attempt to get me a comprehensive overview. It's up to me to review each story and hope for a good match.

Ironically, at the largely overshadowed MSN site, similar to Yahoo, I get a big election photo on the home page along with links, including one called "state-by-state results" that leads to MSNBC here. And over there is a pretty neat "Democracy Dashboard" giving me that type of overview I wanted:

It's a pity Windows Live didn't reach out to either MSN or MSNBC and do something special to point to this or somehow integrate it into the results.

What about AOL? From the home page, it's pretty easy to spot a link to a AOL election page with results for the House, Senate and more:

Searching for election results brings back disappointing Google listings in the main results. However, the new FullView column does a good job of dividing news into elections overall, US Senate coverage, US House coverage and more. And clicking on any of the "View all" links brings up the special AOL election page (see the full page here).

Now to the New York Times. I headed over there pretty much by chance. There are any number of newspapers I might of thought of off the top of my head, and usually its my original home town paper of the Los Angeles Times. But I hit the NY Times today, and boy was I glad.

Right on the home page, above the "fold" is an easy-to-spot election map. In seconds, it organized the most important information I was looking for into a way for me to know what was going on:

Drilling into the full map was even better. There, I could click on any state -- in particular the undecided ones -- and see the current situation:

Just when I was thinking "what if," I saw the "Create Outcomes" tab where I could click on a state and flip it to the Democrats or the Republicans to see how it might go with the Senate. Outstanding!

Other newspapers or web sites might have done as well with similar displays. If so, my apologies that this wasn't a review of the best election results sites. Instead, it was really meant to see how well the search engines held up as information resources for this particular news event.

Overall, I've written many times before that there's a role humans can play in search results. Today -- this was a perfect example of that. Yahoo almost certainly put some human effort into crafting results, and it was the clear victor in terms of quality of what was coming up in web search listings. AOL comes in second, again where human effort has helped its FullView listings help make up for the poor crawler-based results from Google.

In third, I put Google and Ask. Google's results were poor, but at least it floated some news results that may have helped. Ask, I was rooting for. But that Smart Answers box simply wasn't showing up for the queries I thought people were doing. Even if people were getting it for "election," it wasn't helpful to get election results. I really appreciate the effort, and if this had been for something other than actual results, Ask would have been great. In last place -- Windows Live.

This campaign of sorts is also one of those classic "what if" races. With just a little more effort, Yahoo would have had a landslide victory by getting people to its great overview page. The same is true for AOL. Ask, with just a bit more thought, could have had that box coming up for "election results" rather than just "elections" and added some links to get people to actual results. Windows Live, if it had remembered its MSN origins, might not be in last. And Google? A company that's all about organizing information might not have put in such a poor performance if it used some human power in the way the New York Times did.

Postscript: See also Case Study: Digg Versus Google News Traffic from me on my personal blog that covers how this article ultimately brought in lots of traffic from Google News from those unable to find election results there, along with lots of other data and a comparison to traffic from a top story at Digg on the same day.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 4:17 AM | Permalink

November 2, 2006

Ask.com Launches Elections Smart Answers

Ask.com launched some new smart answers for the upcoming elections. You can do a search on elections 2006 to see "General Elections are Tuesday, November 7, 2006." The smart answer also gives you links to the Republican Party and the Democrats web sites. Additional quick links they give within the smart answers include; Analysis by Poll Reports, Race Profiles, Key Races, Key Issues, Races by Issue, and Congressional Districts Map. The additional resources include Candidate Reports, Ballot Items, Campaign Fact Checking, Campaign Funding, and Evaluating Initiatives. Finally, you can also break down by state by searching for New York state elections. I have taken some screen captures also.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:37 AM | Permalink

November 1, 2006

Quick Access to Cool Yahoo Features

Today's SearchDay article, A Closer Look at Yahoo Shortcuts, is the third in our series looking at the special features search engines have implemented to speed up access to the information you care most about. The first two were A Closer Look at Ask's Smart Answers and A Closer Look At Microsoft's Instant Answers.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 3:45 AM | Permalink

October 26, 2006

AOL Scores with Newly Enhanced Search Features

AOL has quietly rolled out a major upgrade to its search service, adding new "FullView" links that automatically pull in multimedia, local, news or other types of content to supplement Google-powered web search results. Others have experimented with including non-web search content on result pages, but AOL has really pushed the idea to a new level with this release, and I highly recommend you try it out. More on the new release in today's SearchDay article, AOL Enhances Search with FullView Results.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 1:36 PM | Permalink

October 19, 2006

October 10, 2006

Sizing Up Search Engine Instant Answers

The major search services have all be increasing their efforts to deliver focused "answers" to many types of queries. They each take a different approach to this process, with names such as Ask's Smart Answers, Yahoo's Shortcuts, Google's Onebox results and Microsoft's Instant Answers. In today's SearchDay article, A Closer Look at Ask's Smart Answers, SEW correspondent Brian A. Smith kicks off a four-part series that takes an in-depth look at each of these programs, illustrating the unique approaches offered by the major search engines.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 8:09 AM | Permalink

September 5, 2006

Netscape Search Inserts Netscape News Above Web Results

What's this? Netscape Search has changed? So says Netscape's Jason Calacanis. What's new? From what Jason says and I can see, the big difference is that there's a new "Netscape.com results" section at the top of the page that shows you top voted stories from the Netscape community news service.

More on that service is cover in my Netscape Aims To Be Digg 2.0, Slashdot 3.0 With Community News Mode post. After the Netscape.com results, you'll get Google-powered results from across the web.

To be clear, this isn't a case of users voting particular stories to the top of search results, say on a query-by-query basis. Rather, from what I can tell, stories get popular over at Netscape.com itself. Then the top stories over there might show up in response to searches at Netscape Search, if they are a good keyword match. In other words, think of it as NetscapeRank. If a story has good NetscapeRank, that might help it rank well in keyword search results.

FYI marketers, it might not take much to pick up that rank. A query on cars gives me three results that have only one or two votes each. More than votes might be involved, of course -- and I haven't seriously poked at this in any details. But there may be opportunities, though the Netscape traffic is far, far less than at the major search engines.

From a searcher perspective, I guess it's mainly useful if you want to be alerted to news results in the course of your regular web searching. Places like Google and Yahoo have long done this already. The difference with Netscape is that you can get your news sourced from a community, rather than an algorithmic search engine.

Then again, use the Google Co-op link for Digg you'll find here, and then you'll sort of get what Netscape is doing, just with Digg as your news source showing up at the top of Google searches.

Perhaps down the line, we'll see Digg follow Netscape's lead and make it possible to search Digg and the web at the same time, something that doesn't seem possible right now at the Digg site.

Finally, search.netscape.com is a long-standing address for Netscape Search. That's still active and redirecting here, where the "old" Netscape search remains active.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:18 AM | Permalink

August 2, 2006

Ask.com Releases ISBN Number Smart Answers

Gary Price notes that Ask.com has added support for ISBN number searches. For example, conduct a search on 091096551X, which is the book Gary Price and Chris Sherman wrote, you should notice an image of the book and a link to compare prices. This is a neat feature, but I should note that entering in the same ISBN number at Yahoo Search gives you a Yahoo Shortcut that takes you to comparison shopping in the Yahoo Network. It was a nice feature for Ask.com to add.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:14 AM | Permalink

June 9, 2006

MSN Windows Live Launches News & Local Live Answers

The MSN Search blog announced that MSN Search now supports news specific and local specific "live answers." What that means is if you do a search on something news related like, george bush at live.com, you will get news related results at the top. Same deal with local specific searches such as, edison, nj dentist. Google, Yahoo and Ask.com all have this type of feature.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:25 AM | Permalink

World Cup: Google Does The Logo Thing; Yahoo & Ask Have Smart Shortcuts

Google's sporting a special World Cup-version of its logo in honor of the start of the World Cup today, while Yahoo and Ask are offering special results that come up after World Cup-related searches. A round-up of what's going on, below.

Over at Google, there's new World Cup module that you can add to your personalized home page to keep up on matches and standings. The company is also promoting the new module on its regular home page to encourage take-up. ZDNet has a screenshot of that. Here's what I see from the UK:

The Official Google Blog is also pushing other ways to tap into World Cup info via Google, though most of these things are pretty generic.

Gary Price has done a recap of other things in the search world touching on the World Cup, focusing on ways to get mobile alerts in the US and in Europe and the fast facts that FIFA is offering.

Gary also spots a World Cup Yahoo Shortcut you can see here (but no Yahoo logo change, not even on Yahoo Germany). Ask is offering a similar Smart Answer service as you'll see here. Ask also didn't change its logo, but the home page shows flags for each team in the World Cup:

Click on the flag, and you'll get a Smart Answer with related info like you'll see for the US here.

Over at MSN Search, no custom answers and no logo changes that I can see (nor at Windows Live Search, either). But back to Google, they are doing some OneBox answers, like you'll see here or here.

Over at Technorati, there's nothing on the home page indicating anything special for the World Cup for those who want to track it in the blogosphere. Clearly if Niall Kennedy hadn't left, the World Cup would be all over Technorati. Niall declares his love of soccer here today (so Niall, get on your MSN Windows Live colleagues to do something).

OK, OK, the MSN portal home page is at least pointing to a two minute guide to the World Cup done in conjunction with Fox Sports. Of course, this is the same partnership whose official store can't send US football kit for kids when promise, so phooey on them. More on that, plus my own thoughts on the World Cup madness that's starting on my personal blog in In The Middle Of World Cup Mad England, I Root For The US.

Don't forget, yesterday's post US, UK Searchers & The World Cup covered some of the top searches involving footballers in the UK and the US.

Am I missing something? Comment!!! It's easy -- just head to World Cup, Search & Stuff at our Search Engine Watch Forums.

Postscript: Google Blogoscoped notes there are different country-specific logos at Google using the team colors of those countries

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 7:23 AM | Permalink

December 20, 2005

Yahoo Launches Open Shortcuts, Allows Creation Of Custom Search Commands

The new Yahoo Open Shortcuts service lets anyone create their own custom search commands for use on Yahoo. Want to navigate to a particular site quickly or have Yahoo remember a particular search string? The new service lets you do this.

This help page provides full details on how the system works, and this page helps walk you through the creation process. Time Saving Search Shortcuts on the Yahoo Search Blog also has more info.

To add a few examples, let's say you want to reach the Search Engine Watch Blog quickly. Using the shortcuts creation page, you give the shortcut a name that you'll enter (let's say "sewb") and the URL (http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog). Once you've set this up, you can then do this into the Yahoo search box:

!sewb

And that is supposed to take you to the Search Engine Watch Blog home page. You can make any number of commands to navigate wherever you like, and you can recall the entire list you've created through this command:

!list

How about saving searches? Sure. Say you always use Yahoo to search against our site to find stories about Yahoo. That would look like this:

site:blog.searchenginewatch.com yahoo

After doing that search, look in the address bar of your browser, and you'll see a URL similar to this:

http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=site%3Ablog.searchenginewatch.com%20yahoo

Now using the creation page, you'd enter a search command/shortcut you want to save the URL to be associated with (let's say sew-yahoo). Then anytime you did this:

!sew-yahoo

that long URL you copy and pasted would automatically be sent to Yahoo, causing it to rerun your search.

I tested the service before it went public and also 15 minutes after that, and I found the shortcuts I'd made and saved weren't working. Even Yahoo's own shortcuts like !my weren't working. If you find the same, keep trying. I suspect they'll begin operating shortly.

Don't want to use the creation page? Power folks can make any shortcut on the fly right within the search box. The magic weapon is the !set command. Use that followed by the name of your shortcut and the URL to save, and you'll make a shortcut on the fly. For example:

!set sewf http://forums.searchenginewatch.com

would instantly create a shortcut for you called "sewf" that takes you to the Search Engine Watch Forums.

Yahoo's created a number of shortcuts that anyone can use to reach or search popular sites, such as Amazon, My Yahoo and Flickr. Unfortunately, the shortcuts you create can't be shared with others.

In contrast, YubNub that I wrote about earlier this year lets you not only create any number of powerful shortcuts, but once created, everyone else can use them.

For more about that an and a similar service called Ambedo, see these past posts:

Postscript from Gary: Along with other services that blogged about above like YubNub (mobile version also available) and Ambedo, even more other tools offer similar search shortcut services and tools. Here's a quick look at a few, what my best be described as "related services" that I've used over the years.

Browsers Many browsers offer pre-built search shortcut features.

+ For example, some shortcuts are built into Opera. For example, entering a "g" in the address box and then your search terms will run a Google search, entering an "z" plus search terms runs an Amazon.com search, a "z" plus search terms runs an eBay search. Documentation about all of this is available here.

Worth mentioning that states that these options can't be customized BUT this page says they can. It will take a little hacking but it's easy enough for a non-geek to do it. The problems is I'm not sure it works. Details about what I'm talking about here in a knowledge base entry.

+ Other browsers also offer search shortcuts that can be created with little effort. One of many examples is, Netcaptor. This browser calls search shortcuts "Quick Search" and they can be set-up in seconds. The documentation is clear and is found in the Help section. The section on "Aliases" might also be worth taking a look at.

Toolbars Three toolbars allow you to customize and add search capabilities direct from any search box. I've mentioned all of them on the blog or in SearchDay during the past few years.

The A9 Toolbar The link above takes you to a blog post from August that explains how you can add a search shortcut to the A9 toolbar with just two clicks. It also explains how to (without an URL "hacking") to create advanced searches directly from the toolbar. The A9 toolbar is available for Firefox and IE.
This post describes NeedleSearch, a toolbar for only available for Firefox. Like A9, this software allows you to add the power of any search engine to the toolbar with a click or two.
The Copernic Meta Toolbar (IE only) also offers this feature.

Btw, these services as well as many others allow advanced users ca "hack the urls" and bring very advanced searches directly to the toolbar. Trust me, it's easy and fun. The possibilities are endless.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:15 AM | Permalink

December 15, 2005

Google Sings a New Tune With Google Music Search

Until today, Google hasn't been a particularly useful service for finding information on bands, links to online music stores or other music related information. That's changed with the introduction of new music-oriented results that are automatically triggered when a Google web search has music-related content. Gary and I offer a rundown of the new feature in today's SearchDay article, Google Adds Music Search Feature , and also describe the music features that have been available at the other major search engines for some time.

Posted by Chris Sherman at 4:31 AM | Permalink

November 27, 2005

New Search Shortcuts from Yahoo

The Yahoo Search Blog points out that they've added a couple of new search shortcuts (They have about thirty now). What's new?

+ Movie Trailers Add the term "trailer" to your movie title query. Here's an example. If available, links to trailers appear near the top of the page

+ Movie Showtimes and Maps Just search a title and a location by entering a title and location or the trigger word "showtimes" and a location. Actually, I blogged about a Yahoo movie showtime shortcut over a year ago. However, the links to ratings and maps are new.

Btw, Ask Jeeves has offered a movie "Smart Search" on web results pages since May of 2004. The Smart Answer box often contains an image of the movie poster and links to trailers, the official site, and reviews (via Rotten Tomatoes). These Smart Answers are available for both new films as well as many cinema classics.

Google also offers links to movie info on web results pages.

Posted by Gary Price at 5:02 PM | Permalink

November 4, 2005

Changes to Yahoo Video Search Page; Image Search Adds Results Page Refinements

Yahoo Video Search made a change last week that allows you to view your results in either a "grid" view or a "list" view which also offers some additional description/transcript info if available.

I've also started to notice that Yahoo is placing links to Yahoo Shortcuts on non-web search results pages. Here's an example of a video search for: "baseball" and on an image search results page for the search: Chicago. Finally, image search results pages now allow the searcher to refine their search after clicking the search button. Look for various refinements at the top of the page below the blue line. For example, by just clicking you can only show only small, black and white images. Since February, Yahoo Images has also allowed the searcher to create "transformed" image queries using natural language.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:34 PM | Permalink

October 27, 2005

Google Tweaks Web Search Features Page With Info About Inline Image Results

Since many of you follow every one of Google's move (even the very small ones), I thought I would toss out a small tweak that they made to their Web Search Features page today. The page now includes a mention of "inline" image results (from Google Images) being available in some cases at the top of Google Web Search results pages.

Actually, this is NOT a new feature but one that has been around since the beginning of the year. The page also points out the using terms like "pics [baseball], pictures [dogs] or images [bridges] in your query will almost always return images at the top of web results pages.

The concept of including inline image results on web results pages, if certain trigger words are used, is not new. Ask Jeeves has been offering this feature since 2003.

Yahoo does much the same. However, Yahoo takes it a step further and allow a small amount of natural language in the query string to bring back more precise results on image results pages and on some web results pages. Examples and more explanation here.

Posted by Gary Price at 12:24 AM | Permalink

October 25, 2005

Google's New "Travel" OneBox

Looks like John "The Search" Battelle has caught yet another Google onebox on web search results pages. This new (I haven't noticed it before) feature offers direct links to several travel databases (Expedia, Travelocity, and Orbitz) when you enter in city pairs. Say Seattle and Boston.

It also works for non-US destinations. However, if you want to go from Portland, Maine to Phoenix, this feature will not work for you. You get no option to change from Portland, Oregon to Maine. The default travel database is to Expedia which is owned by IAC/InterActive that also owns Ask.com. Interesting. I wonder when Ask will turn this idea into a Smart Search. Maybe they have it now but I can't seem to find it. Also, another revenue stream for Google. Travel services and Google have always seemed to make sense to me. Heck, maybe my April Fools day post about Google Jet will soon become a reality. (-: Of course, we know it's no joke that Google has purchased a 767. Finally, JB I'm right with you friend about the comments you open your post with.

Posted by Gary Price at 8:32 PM | Permalink

October 1, 2005

Ask Jeeves Smart Search Makes Basic TV Program Reference Info a Click Away

When Ask Jeeves (aka Ask.com) launched a slew of new Smart Search options in August I briefly mentioned that info about tv programs was now part of the Smart Search service. However, it was just in the last day or two that I realized the number of tv programs AJ offers Smart Answer boxes for.

Smart Search boxes for television programs often contain a plot overview, link to the official site, episode guides, images, and links to purchase DVD's (if available). I've found Smart Answers for shows currently airing like The OC, 24, Law and Order and The Simpsons. A search for "The Office" shows Smart Answers for both the NBC and BBC versions. Nice. Classics programs including The Andy Griffith Show, Saturday Night Live, The Twilight Zone are Smart Search ready. Even cartoons like Speed Racer and The Flintstones are included.

Ask provides some of the show reference info from Zap2it.com and TV.com.

Let's hope Ask continues to develop this and other Smart Search research tools with more related links and in the case of tv, video clips.

Postscript: I even noticed Smart Answer boxes (on Ask.com) for UK tv classics like Fawlty Towers and Eastenders.

Postscript 2: I also spotted some tv-related Smart Answers on Ask Jeeves UK.

Posted by Gary Price at 11:52 PM | Permalink

August 31, 2005

Three New Search Shortcuts Added to Google Mobile

The Google Blog reports that three new search shortcuts are now available for users of Google's mobile web search (XHTML) service.

Shortcuts Enter: movies [film title] or movie [location] Get movie showtime info. Enter: weather [city or ZIP Code] Access four-day forecast. Enter: Ticker Symbol Access current stock price (delayed) for NASDAQ, AMEX, and NYSE listed companies. Other shortcuts listed here.

If you don't have an XHTML-capable mobile browser or just want to check out the mobile service, the user interface should is accessible here.

Yahoo Mobile and 4info.net also offer movie showtimes, weather, stock quotes, and other shortcuts.

Posted by Gary Price at 1:45 PM | Permalink

May 16, 2005

Dictionary Spam, Meet Number Spam

Dictionary spam is when someone creates a web page that seeming has every word in the dictionary, in hopes of capturing someone who might be searching for anything. Now here's some number spam. Google Search by Number Spam from Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Roundtable describes how he searched for a package number on Google. Yep, he got the Google shortcut that leads to the UPS site. However, he also got a page promising adult content that came up because it lists a ton of various number combination. Note to package tracking companies: if tracking numbers have no spaces, it will make it hard for this type of thing to work.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:10 AM | Permalink

April 19, 2005

Searching For Gas Prices

High Gas Prices Fuel Search Engine Usage from Jennifer Laycock at Search Engine Guide talks about two gas price search engines (GasBuddy.com & GasPriceWatch.com) that help those in the US find the lowest prices to fill up. FYI, both Yahoo and Ask Jeeves have shortcuts to get you prices, as well.

At either Ask Jeeves or Yahoo, enter "gas" plus a zip code, such as gas 92663, and you'll get links to the two sites mentioned above. Of course, it's faster to go to the gas price sites directly and get the answers. But, if you can't remember them offhand, this is a quick way to find them and have links already set for your local area.

Now what would be really cool is if someone whipped up prices placed against a map. When it happens, as I'm sure it will, we'll bring news.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 12:04 PM | Permalink

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