It's also part of a larger experiment to determine which search engine offers the most relevant results overall. The Search Engine Experiment Any feedback appreciated. Also, digging it would be a very nice gesture. The more participants the greater the accuracy of the test results. (As of writing) surprsingly, MSN is owning the search engines so far:
I gave it a try and found google to be the most relevant for the term I was searching for, BUT I think it is best to suggest that people do not search for something they are trying SEO for That way there won't be so much of a skew for what people are looking for in the results. LOL AND as I am an active link checker user, X, Y and Z were readily branded with the correct engine. Neat little survey
Thanks for the feedback. I see what you mean, but I think the best bet might be to leave as much to peoples' judgement so you get a diverse set of queries. If it gives too many clauses about what to search, it might skew it further. If that makes sense?
I guess it really depends on who you are "marketing" the the link to. If you are doing this just to SEO communities, it will be skewed that way, but if you are somehow getting people with no clue about SEO to search and vote, it will all balance out the way you want it to.
Yep, that's what I'm trying to do (anyone and everyone to partipate). I'm sure there'll be a disproportionate number of SEOs, but looking at the logs the search queries people seem fairly natural so far (I've run a few meta search engines in the past which is what I'm basing that on). Thanks everyone digging by the way, I'm pretty sure it's near the "show on frontpage" threshold with just a few more digs, and that amount of traffic would make the experiment very interesting.
I thought I'd bump this up as people might be interested in the test results. Based on ~7,000 participants who have taken part thus far: Google 41% Yahoo Search 33% MSN Search 27% I guess Google really is a better search engine, but only by a small margin. You can digg the test results here