I have long thought that social bookmarking and ranking sites like del.icio.us, digg, and StumbleUpon could be used to enhance current web search results. In March I argued that that StumbleUpon could easily be used for "enhancing or augmenting traditional search engine rankings." Some people, like Rand Fishkin of SEOMoz, already think that del.icio.us provides better search results than Google.
Rand argues that del.icio.us results are more timely, more focused on his demographic, higher quality, and more diverse. He concedes, however, that del.icio.us results do not always list the best first, sometimes lack relevance, and are either ten times better or ten times worse than Google depending on your view.
Enter 50 Matches, a search engine that crawls only sites linked on digg, reddit, or del.icio.us. 50 Matches returns only the top 50 results in each search (hence the name).
The site claims that Google is "broken" and that because social sites link to the best content, search performed on those sites will yield the best results. 50 Matches sports a clean, unadorned design -- like Google -- but does it well as Google?
Here are 5 comparison searches I ran to test out the search engine:
In my opinion, Google out performed 50 Matches on all of those queries. It performed most abysmally in "cures for the common cold," where it came up with mostly results about weather or the cold war. Google, on the other hand, gave me sites with titles like "Natural cures for the common cold?" and "Cold remedies that really work" within the first 5 results. It its defense, 50 Matches seemed to have trouble with words like "the" and "is" that Google ignores -- so some poor results could be a function of the query engine rather than the actual search database. 50 Matches performed best in technology related topics, which is unsurprising given how heavily skewed toward tech each of the sites it indexes are.
For each of my searches (barring the "common cold"), Google spit out the official site for that search term on the first result. (For "web 2.0" it gave Tim O'Reilly's definition article -- which is about as official as you can get.) Wikipedia entries, which are helpful for someone searching for general information on a topic, were also usually listed within the first few results on Google. In general, these sites were nowhere to be found on 50 Matches results. The reason, perhaps, is that people are far less likely to submit official URLs for well-known products, or Wikipedia pages, to sites like digg or reddit -- because everyone is already aware of those sites.
Similarly, people are less likely to bookmark the official page for a person, product, or service, than they are to bookmark an article about it. Google's top result for my "Adobe Photoshop search was the official Photoshop page at Adobe. del.icio.us reports 24 people have bookmarked it. 50 Matches top result, meanwhile, was the Photoshop Tips & Tricks page at Graphic-Design.com -- del.icio.us bookmarks? 2,765.
There are probably some instances when 50 Matches could match Google (searches for popular blogs or items that are likely to be dugg, for example), but I am doubtful that on its own it will ever outperform a top tradition search engine.
While I don't necessarily agree with Rand Fishkin that del.icio.us today is better than Google, he is dead on with one thing he said:
If Yahoo! focused some serious resources here and extended their ownership to places like Digg, Reddit & StumbleUpon, I believe they could build a social-relevance based engine that would show some pretty fantastic content.
I think the key takeaway is that while social bookmarking and ranking sites don't make great search engines on their own, they offer a wealth of user-vetted data that could be used to augment search results in a positive way.
Comments
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There are searches and there are searches. Personally, I like to do them all in one place.
Sure, if I look for a review of some web 2.0 site, perhaps social bookmarking will do better. But what about those times when I need info on a particular file extension? Or some driver?
Social bookmarking is about things that are popular. Google will find something that's unpopular, too.
Posted by: Stan Schroeder | May 15, 2007 2:15 PM
I think Google blows away social searching by far. First off, if you have even the slightest knowledge of searching, you don't search Google for "photoshop"; you search for exactly what you want (unless you are really bored). You search for something like "free web 2.0 photoshop plugins". Being that sites like Digg, and the rest, are overwhelming flooded with useless garbage and spam - what sort of results can you expect to get? Even the items that reach the front page are worthless (most of the time). Delicious's popular pages provide some decent material but it serves as sort of a service to find new random pages you might like. 99% of social bookmarking sites are nothing more than link dumpsters for the entire internet. Soon their indexes will replicate Google's, and Google will have its algorithms in place to be the dominate search platform.
Its mainly the reason why I eliminated free submissions/voting on my site (tweako.com). I want my site to provide serious value for anyone searching. The search might not yield 14 billion results, but if you come across what you are looking for, you know the link will be high quality and most likely deliver exactly what you want.
Posted by: Mike | May 15, 2007 2:17 PM
When it comes to web design tips and tricks, or when you are trying to stay on top of all the beautiful new things the web has to offer, I believe that Social Bookmarking Sites are much better than Google or Yahoo. But honestly, who cares when you can search them all in one place from our site? :P
Posted by: Steffen | May 15, 2007 2:36 PM
I think your observation about Yahoo points the way to the future of a site like 50matches. In combination, the Google algorithm approach and the social approach can work extremely well. And I know Yahoo is headed in this direction too. Yahoo has the algorithm and it has the social properties (or at least can access them just like 50matches can). So I would expect to see the 50matches approach used more by Yahoo over time - and perhaps also Google, although they will experiment with it behind the scenes a lot more.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | May 15, 2007 2:37 PM
I usually only search on Google or Yahoo. I think that eventually places like digg or del.icio.us will be more relevant to all searches, but at least for the time being that the main search engines are the most thorough. They have obviously been around for a long time and so they should be more trusted with every day searching.
Posted by: Web Design Minneapolis | May 15, 2007 2:41 PM
I've been meaning to compliment ReadWriteWeb. Your articles are really standing out over the other Web 2.0 Blogs (TechCrunch, Mashable, etc). You can only read "X company gets a trillion dollars in funding" so many times a week. You have been producing some interesting and well-written content lately.
Posted by: Mike | May 15, 2007 2:48 PM
It depends on what you want to look for. If it's for facts and research, that's better left for searching Google or browsing Wikipedia. For finding quality resources such as the best place to talk about photography, you're better off with del.icio.us or some other similar place. Google's and other search engine's algorithms are better off handling information and data, but they still can't beat the human mind in finding the usefulness and quality of a website.
Posted by: Mia | May 15, 2007 5:24 PM
Yahoo is already up to something like that - their new social search unit in Santa Clara merges Answers, del.icio.us teams with Yahoo Search staff in one place. (http://news.com.com/Yahoo+tests+social+search/2100-1038_3-5768135.html)
Posted by: Emre Sokullu | May 15, 2007 7:14 PM
Don't search tags using a natural language approach. It obviously won't work.
If you want to see one area where del.icio.us et al really outperform Google try doing a search for tourist accommodation in European capitals. Comparing Google and del.icio.us on a search of "cheap accommodation prague" it is quite obvious that Google presents you with all the usual tourist trap options where you get to pay 150 USD per night for a diminutive 15 sqm of plastic furniture and industrially prepared breakfast where del.icio.us turns out inexpensive places with personality. I've personally used this approach for both Prague and Paris and have been far more satisfied with what del.icio.us came up with than with what was proposed by Google.
Posted by: Kristoffer Nilaus Olsen | May 16, 2007 3:39 AM
I usually only search on Google or Yahoo.Comparing Google and del.icio.us on a search of "cheap accommodation prague" it is quite obvious that Google presents you with all the usual tourist trap options where you get to pay 150 USD per night for a diminutive 15 sqm of plastic furniture and industrially prepared breakfast where del.icio.us turns out inexpensive places with personality.You can only read "X company gets a trillion dollars in funding" so many times a week. You have been producing some interesting and well-written content lately.
I always thankfull to google,bcoz without google i do nothing in my work n day to day life also.
Posted by: hema | May 17, 2007 2:42 AM
What we need is a search site that picks up on rapidly-rising stories, whether they be recent news or stuff that's creating a stir in the blogosphere or elsewhere online.
In other words, a search engine that measures the rate of increase in pages containing the search terms, not just the absolute number of pages. Technorati does this somewhat well for blogs and maybe Google considers it, but it's hard to find today's news item with Google's regular search, or even sometimes the news search.
In general, there also needs to be a lot more emphasis put on the date of web pages. I find more and more Google searches giving me stale information, which for computer terms at least should obviously be of less interest.
Posted by: Gordon R. Vaughan | May 17, 2007 10:02 AM
Josh, going by this mindset, I created a Google Co-op search engine, which searches all of the most popular bookmarking and social media sites; try it out here:
http://social-media-marketing.blogspot.com/
I am amazed with the relevance delivered from Google's search technology coupled with the power of social media networks. Please let me know what you think about it. Thanks!
Posted by: Jagdeep Singh Pannu | May 17, 2007 1:06 PM
I remember Zniff, a great search engine for the Spurl social bookmark site, then we had Gataga that did this for multiple bookmark sites.
I've listed the meta-bookmark search services I know on this post, I also have some links to bookmark search vs traditional search
http://libraryclips.blogsome.com/2007/05/10/theagoo-meta-social-bookmark-search-engine
Posted by: John Tropea | May 20, 2007 10:27 PM