I ask this question because for me i believe this to be relevancy. Because you can have a lightening fast search query but have completely un relevant results and never use the site again. I strongly believe as a user and CEO of searchii.com that a user will wait two seconds + if they find what they want, and will likely to return. However if a search query is under 1 second but the results are so far off base, you will find another search provider and never return. Obviously the 'user needs' list is long for a search engine. However i think if a provider gets the big three elements made up thats a great place to start. My top three and what we have based searchii on are: Relevancy Speed Reliability I think there is a certain trust element with web users and search. You need to know what at any time of the day you can login and use that particular search engine. If a content based website is done, not a big drama you will logoff and attempt to view at a later date. WIth search engines this is NOT the case. Just my thoughts.
definitely relevancy but always combined with speed that's why i have some 99% of all searches in G i need to find what i want - fast i usually click several good looking results at once to open in different tabs slow loading pages are killed among all others i find what i need
a combination of both. 1 second and 2 seconds doesn't really make a difference, but if I have to wait 5 minutes to get the relevant result, I won't return again.
Speed first, relevancy second (you can always look through the results if you retireve them faster) reliability - well, it should be up all the time but if its down for extended periods i might forget to come back unless its very good
I'm going to have to go with relevancy. I'd be willing to wait the few extra seconds to get results that actually help me.
a search on searchii.com will take around 1 second. We've tested this many a time cutting this down to less than half a second. However in order for us to return the most relevant results this has been the best on our current clustered infrastructure. What about design? I think design is also important. Yes people like the simplicity of google, however its only for google that we accept this. You see so many google knockoffs and just laugh at the simplicity and uglyness of the design. All other SE's like Live, Yahoo and Searchii have needed a design fit to their own style. So i think design is certainly important as well. Keen for some more feedback
Not bad for speed or relevancy, from what I can tell. Although I do notice the problem of almost every query being dominated by Wikipedia that you get with other engines. Enough of this second-hand, untrustworthy crap already! I'm not fussed about the preview, it just squashes up the pages so they look odd. A small thumbnail screenshot might be better.