Interlink, a Cincinnati web marketing research, search engine optimization and consulting firm, recently ran some tests to assess performance of major (and minor) search engines. Surprisingly, MSN took top honors in relevancy.
Like the search engine relevance tests we’ve done from time to time here at SEW, this isn’t a controlled experiment, but rather a test of how well search engines return “reasonable” results. As such, this study should be regarded as interesting but not definitive.
Over at the 360, Susan Kuchinskas reports:
MSN bested the top two search providers, along with Ask, AOL, Gigablast and Wisenut, when all five factors were considered: relevancy, freshness of content, failure rate, difficult search results, and non-organic or extra features. Difficult searches were queries such as ?car dealer fargo north dakota? and ?appliance repair des moines.?
More information and full results of the study are available here.