Blind Search

'The goal of this site is simple, we want to see what happens when you remove the branding from search engines. How differently will you perceive the results?
This site is built as a fun experiment by Michael Kordahi.'
Michael says: 'The system has many flaws that I know about already, the primary one of interest is the lack of localisation. So, all searches are going through the US as US searches. The other deficiency worth noting is that there is much missing from the actual experience of using these search engines eg, image thumbnails, suggestions, refine queries etc.
Ohh, and this site is very very beta, expect it to break!'

I did two test searches using the following:

1. New Zealand's top exports
2. New Zealand's top ten export destinations

For Search 1 Google produced the best result which was a Statistics New Zealand page. For Search 2 Bing produced a result which was helpful although not exactly what I wanted - it gave the top seven destinations one of which was North America which is too general when an enquirer might want to know whether Canada figures in the top ten.

In both searches the results were the wrong way round e.g. US exports to New Zealand. This may be explained by Michael's comments above. There were also Australian results like this some of which came at the top of the list. Other results were very specific and focussed on one products e.g. wine or electronics. And there were results which focussed on one export destination e.g. Thailand.

See also post on Bing below. The URL for Blind Search is: http://blindsearch.fejus.com/ I'd be interested in what others might have found.

Bing Bing!

And no not this Bing. There has been a lot of discussion on Google News about Bing and no doubt in other blogs and discussion forums. Here's a quote from Tom Krazit writing on Cnet News June 9, 2009: http://news.cnet.com/8301-17939_109-10261061-2.html in a piece entitled: 'Google's Schmidt dings Bing'.

"Bing has been well-received in its first trip around the Internet, but it obviously has an awfully long way to go before it makes a dent in Google's business. Still, with some in the search industry now wondering if Yahoo really intends to compete in search over the next few years, Bing may shape up as the only true alternative to Google."

Has anyone in international trade really had a good look at Bing - care to share your findings?