I will preface this with the fact that I am a moderator at Search Engine Watch forums - and yet I am really disappointed in the final selections that Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman made for a couple of the categories.
Hey I admit I really like Google, and maybe my opinion is biased by the friendships I have there - but look back through the blog and my posts on SEW and I think you will see me taking them to task as warranted.
The fact that the popular vote for Outstanding Search Service was overruled and given to Yahoo amazes me. I do not know what terms Danny and Chris search for over at Yahoo but please. In my vertical Yahoo is barely better than MSN (Making Search Nasty) - it can be so easily manipulated.
Has it improved over the past 12 months? Yes but hey if that was the criteria why not give it to SearchFeed or BlowSearch....
Hey the Awards should just be chosen by Danny and Chris and I would not have a problem as they can and should be able to use them to recognise companies within the industry that they feel have had winning years.
But to take our votes and then do this:
Just 2 percent of the 490 votes cast in this category went to Jux2, but we thought it deserved to win over the more popular choices. It provides a clean, simple way to see all the results from the most important major search engines. You can easily view what the big three crawlers of Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves agree on -- plus the results that are specific to each search engine, as well. There's no better way to understand the unique voices that each search engine speaks with.
Just says they really don't care.... why not call the request not votes but opinions or suggestions.
Congrats to all the winners and good job Danny and Chris...
Sorry, Frank, but for Overall Search Service, it's for overall rather than just web search quality. As we wrote, with Google Images being out of date for months -- which Google itself called embarrassing -- that was a killer for Google in that category. If it hadn't been for that, it would have been tied with Yahoo as a cowinner.
ReplyDeleteOn Jux2, few know of it, so it's not surprising few voted for it. We still felt it was deserving, and that's why we did the override.
We don't override the popular vote lightly -- in fact, in most cases we don't. But we do want the vote opinion. We also have always done it this way, we have overriden choices before, and it hasn't been raised as much of an issue. We've also always been clear on the initial nomination forms, the actual voting forms and the write-ups that votes are considered but not the final word on winners. Also explained a bit more here, http://forums.searchenginewatch.com/showthread.php?threadid=4981
Danny you should know overall I agree with your opinions and the knock on Google images is very fair.
ReplyDeleteI have just seen a lot of garbage in the search results, have had a year when the Yahoo people could not explain the inclusion service they took back inhouse and ultimately had to pass me along to Position Tech to explain it all, and in the search area have had poor communications with them.
Now as far as the portal and the people that run their other media sells - I would tout them above virtually anyone. Personally, I think they should do what AOL is doing and concentrate on the information and content they have at the portal level and strengthen the monetization of that and just give the search to someone else.
Jux2 I have not really had too much time to play with but is now on my list.... if you guys give it a nod there has to be something to it...
Now come on every year someone bitches about the vote... figured I'd get it out of the way early....
I wasn't trying to start a huge debate... just needed a little controversy to spice up the post....