Teoma better than Google

[Bernard]

There was a opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal (print edition - I don't read their web site) touting Teoma as offering more relevant results than Google right now. I wonder how much major media reports like this can impact the "market share" of search engines for surfer's attentions.

I personally have to wonder how Teoma will be able to compete for serious searchers attentions until they start crawling the web more aggressively. They are still using a six month old snapshot of my site....

[ihelpyou]

Yes, which makes you wonder how anyone can 'tout' more relevancy if the content is 6 months old. :eek:

But the power of media huh? Any one person or company can be "appointed" an expert or guru or more relevant by others, and it makes it so, right?

[Bernard]

I have no idea who the author of the piece is, but I suspect that a great percentage of WSJ's audience wouldn't know enough to question it.

[RoySpencer]

well, since Jeeves is obviously a Brit, and Brits are more intelligent, then I guess he would know more than Mr. Google:rolleyes:

[qwerty]

I haven't seen Teoma crawling a lot lately, but unless I missed something its index seems to have grown quite a bit. I remember reading a few months ago that it only had about five hundred million pages (teeny), and now I think the claim is about a billion and a half -- triple the previous number.

Of course, that could just be my memory playing tricks on me, or the source of one of those numbers could just be wrong.

[Bernard]

They still have the same old copy of my site in their index. Are they crawling the web for new pages only? Hard to imagine that they will seriously compete for relevancy bassed upon PFI and AdWords for fresh content.

[JustTrying]

Teoma will never surpass Google IMO until they include a cache feature, and start a continuous update cycle on par with the Big "G".

If Google were really smart they would learn a way to bring in the "Refine" and "Resources" features that Teoma offers. These features make Teoma a much better SE for doing some real heavy researching -- just from my own experience that is.

[Webmaster T]

Originally posted by JustTrying
If Google were really smart they would learn a way to bring in the "Refine" and "Resources" features that Teoma offers. These features make Teoma a much better SE for doing some real heavy researching -- just from my own experience that is. [/B]Agreed, I did go to Teoma after reading that article. I think I had also got around to Mike Grehan's papper as well. I like the "Communities" which seem to be better at analyzing "authority". Possibly due to its smaller index size. Less crap in, less out. :)

[martind]

We updated the titles on our main site on April 16th but Teoma still hasn't noticed - and this is a site with a Google PR of 8 for its home page and not unreasonable traffic levels. I don't think Google will be worrying overmuch about competition from this direction until they start getting out and about and getting themselves up to date.

[qwerty]

Funny you should mention that, Martin. The ask/teoma crawler came through one of my sites today and crawled about 20 pages. It's the first time I've seen that spider in quite a while.

[bwelford]

I checked my website via http://web.ask.com/web and couldn't see how to check the cached copy. How do you do that?

[qwerty]

I don't think there's any way to do that, Barry. I took a look at the information pages on the Teoma toolbar, and it doesn't mention that capability either.

I don't even see a "last updated" date in the SERPs on Teoma.

[Webmaster T]

The question is are Google's results as good as they were this time last year. No, they are being skewed by PR manipulation. So Teoma may be stale, but it does have better relevancy for authority! Depending on what you are searching for it is quite likely a better place to start then Google especially if it is research related searching. Quite possibly it is not where you want to start if you are shopping.

[Bernard]

Teoma is still using a listing for my site reflecting the title tag that I had back in February. That said, the results for the SERPs that I care about are much cleaner than Google's even if they are stale.

[Webmaster T]

Agreed Bernard that is my point! Better to have dated good info then fresh manipulated results! Google IMO, is for the first time ever vulnerable from a relevancy standpoint. My early research has shown both Teoma and Inktomi have better methods for calculating "authority". Some will argue but looking at the SERPs it does seem the links are a truer gauge of "authority". PR was Google's secret sauce IMO, the sauce was spoiled by too many chefs adding tainted ingredients!

As understanding of the algo increased the quality of the results from the algo has decreased. This is not a first, nor will it be the last, that is just how things have worked for as long as I've been watching this. I think sometime in the near future Google will either change the PR algo to handle irrelevent links and internal linking that is manipulating PR or it will be replaced with an altogether new approach which if they are smart they'll be very quiet about what ingredients are in the sauce.

[Bernard]

For the SERP terms that I watch, I would rank those three: Teoma/Ask Google Inktomiaccording to relevance and "cleanliness". I would rate them: Google Inktomi Teomaaccording to either freshness or completeness criteria.