04.22.08
Wikia.com vs. Stumpedia.com vs. Mahalo.com vs. ISayHello.com
I’m obviously biased, so when I win don’t be surprised…but I’m going to try and skew the results in favor of the other guys because well, if my product sucks I want to fix it.
The Test:
I’m going to search for Jason Calacanis on each of the services. I haven’t hand modified my results for Jason Calacanis on my engine so it should be a reasonable test.
Speed:
Wikia: And I thought the 800ms ISayHello.com’s search results took was too long. You can go get a Starbuck’s in the time it takes for Wikia to return results. I clocked 14 seconds, for most results a few came in at 8 some at 20, but 14 seemed to be both the Mean and the Mode.
Mahalo: Blazing fast. It aint Google fast, but it is fast.
ISayHello.com: It feels slow especially compared to Google, but on par with Live.com maybe a tiny bit slower than Yahoo. I think I take a hit from Youtube and Metacafe loading.
Stumpedia: Reasonably fast, doesn’t take long to load 3 results.
Quality of Results:
Wikia: Not too bad, but not great. Calacanis.com, Searchenginewatch,ReadWriteTalk, Mahalo, Twitter, Webpro news, TechCrunch, WebanalyticsBook, WebProNews, Beet.tv…. No Photo even though that is supported.
Mahalo.com: Calacanis.com, Twitter, Wikipedia,Weblogs Inc, Forbes, Jensense, TechCrunch. A picture of Gallery of Jason from Flickr, links to a Google Video and Jason’s Ustream
ISayHello.com: Calacanis.com, Wikipedia, TechCrunch, Twitter, Valleywag. Youtube of Jason Calacanis at his home, MetaCafe of someone talking about Jason’s Keynote at Affiliate Summit, 3 good Flickr Photos of Jason, and one odd one.
Stumpedia: Tinpig, Calcanis.com, Wikipedia. No Pics, no video, nothing of note.
Summing the Jason Search Up:
None of these results sucked except for Stumpedia. Mahalo Kicked ass with its hand edited results for its CEO. And it should. Wikia was slow but didn’t suck, Stumpedia just plain fails. 3 Results? I mean Jason is not Britney Spears but he isn’t a nobody, and you would expect that anyone in the search engine business should have something for him. (Matt Cutts only got 2 results)
But lets say you dislike Jason. I don’t dislike Jason, I think he is a smart guy, and he left a comment on my blog or someone using his name did, so hey, I’d buy him a drink, or a dinner, but lets say you didn’t like him. His start up crushed yours or something like that…
So you search for Jason Calacanis Sucks, because lets face it sometimes you aren’t looking for "Happy" search results.
Stumpedia: Zero Results
Mahalo: You get google results, and they all say Calacanis and Sucks but none of them are about how Jason Sucks.
iSayHello: Digg-Why it Sucks to be Friends with Jason Calacanis. That counts as a "hit"
Wikia: Jason Calacanis Sucks by MorningCoffeeNotes.com that Counts as a "Hit"
So what does that say….
Wikia doesn’t suck. It is slow but there is promise, I don’t think it offers any improvements over Google, but maybe someday.
Stumpedia, yeah it sucks. Too Few entries 4500 or so.
Mahalo, Good but only if you search the way it expects. You can’t get hits on a lot of phrases. I actually got better results doing a site:mahalo.com search in Google than I did using their search bar.
ISayHello: You knew I was going to declare victory, it’s my site. Mahalo is faster. And if you are the CEO you definitely get better results than my Generic Template can give. But I also had results for Jason and his level of Suck which I count as a victory because you aren’t always looking for "encyclopedic" results.
This is a Response to:
Venturebeat - Search Wikia takes a step closer to the promise of ’search meets Wikipedia’
Mathew Ingram - Wikia Search: Edit anything and everything
CenterNetworks - Wikia Search Launches Major Enhancements to Search Alpha
Jason said,
April 23, 2008 at 10:41 am
thanks for taking the time to use the product.
I’d suggest doing the top searches on Google Trends one day as well as the top 100 searches overall.
I’m hoping we would do well!
Also, for bonus points put a non-tech savvy user in front of a mahalo page they are interested in (i.e. ask them their favorite tv show, actor, car, movie, food, etc). If you do five pages they like you’ll see something amazing happen.
best j
Brandon Wirtz said,
April 23, 2008 at 11:07 am
We both know that Google trends are fleeting at best but that they make for a good ROI because often you can capture traffic for a few hours or days, or like I did with Zoey Zane you get $30k in ad revenue over a month on a 250 word post with a picture… but one thing I noticed is that while you do cover Google Trends well, you have to enter them really close to the way they appear on the trends list. If you pick somthing from the related trends list you don’t often return a result.
Also when Mispellings hit the trends list you create results for the mispellings. Rather than mapping the mispellings to a result which actually maps to the correct spelling. This is be cause you are relying on Google for your traffic, not because you actually want to see people find what they are looking for.
I think that is the difference between your approach and mine that is most obvious. I am trying to create a Search Engine with hints and pointers so an amateur can find good results quickly. You are trying to build a Content Engine which captures search from other people’s search engines (Google).
I’d be lying if I said I don’t expect that north of 50% of my traffic will originate from Google, but my goal is to keep my Page Views per Visitor to 2 or better. The person comes to my site from a generic search. Sees a refinement they like better and leaves through a page returned through that refined result.