So, Where Has Your Search Engine Been Today?

Visit Google, Yahoo, MSN or one of the lesser search engines, and you get a few million results for just about any search term. Despite this impressive depth of results, most users consider only a few of the WebPages being pointed to. A lot of research indicates that most searchers exit search engine result pages to visit one of the top three results. That raises the question: What about the remaining million plus results?

We Need a Search-Engine to Search Search-Engine Results!

Based on the above premise, I set out on a mission to simplify search engine results. But, try as I might, I could not find an automated method to simplify search engine results. I think that is logical, otherwise these multi-billion dollar behemoths would have done so themselves. So, I thought: What is that one thing that I can do which the Googles and Yahoos of the world cannot do. And the quick answer was: I can use human / personal discretion in choosing search results. This would bypass the legion of search engine optimizers who keep building link popularity to rise up in search pages.

Can Human Selected Search Results Beat Algorithm Selected Search Results?

Tough to say, but you can look for yourself. Compare the Google results for Hair Removal (http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=Hair+Removal) and my selected results for Hair Removal (http://www.human-search-engine.com/6.html). There is some overlap, but the results that I display are a result of my personal visit to the listed pages.

Conclusions

As search engines become better and faster, there is a need for a human touch to search results. In this constant struggle between spammy (scammy?) search engine optimizers and search engine engineers, the searcher can be the victim.

Ajeet Khurana is a search engine enthusiast and the founder of the Human Search Engine http://www.human-search-engine.com/ He is also the search engines correspondent for the AIA content network. Read some of his search engine musings at: http://search-engines.allinfoabout.com In another life, Ajeet is the Business Majors correspondent for About.com, an online publication of the New York Times Company: http://businessmajors.about.com