January 5th, 2012 | 
Author: Head-to-head Challenge
I decided to ask both search engines a series of questions to compare their performance. Im going to summarize my results here rather than provide screen shots. I know most of you will think these questions are easy; please consider that the ease or difficulty of answering a question may be a matter of perspective. After all until recently how many people outside of the field had even heard of SEO?
What is search engine optimization? Both Google and Answers.com provided the right answer to this question in the first sentence of their results. In Googles case the sentence came from a snippet from the first hyperlinked web site.
Where is the Blarney Stone? Again both Google and Answers.com quickly return satisfactory results. Its worth noting that Googles snippet this time came from Wikipedia. For some reason Google provided only the metric measure of the distance from Cork while Answers.com gave the distance in miles.
When is the next Fringe Festival in Scotland? This question required the search engines to recognize several things at once: dates the name of a festival and location. Again both performed similarly with a list of links that might or might not be relevant. Googles links seemed a little more recent. Answers.com provided related links that at least seemed intriguing; as I had observed earlier its a good engine for browsing.
Who first said Time flies like an arrow fruit flies like a banana? This question required the search engines to recognize a quotation. Google gets points for bolding the quotation in all of the results it returns but Answers.com wins conclusively by identifying Groucho Marx as the originator of the quote before one even clicks through to any results though to find the actual quote itself I had to scroll down a ways.
How are Venetian masks made? Googles first result for this query was from Wisegeek.com and it answered the question What are Venetian masks? Though thats a different question than the one I asked when I clicked through to the site I found that the fourth paragraph gave a quick description of the process. Answers.com didnt do as well; I got results from Wiki Answers which told me what Venetian masks are made of plaster of Paris or china but that doesn’t really tell me HOW they are made. If I was trying to make a Venetian mask myself clicking through the results returned by Google gave me more useful information than clicking through Answers.coms results.
I would be very interested to see what kinds of results other users get but I must admit I was a little disappointed in Answers.com. I wont rule it out for use when Im in a mood to browse topics related to my specific query but except in one case it did not outperform Google when it came to answering my questions. If Answers.coms goal is to beat Google I see a long road ahead. I believe it makes more sense for the company to serve as an information portal but even with that more modest goal Answers.com will need to do some work; drawing answers from a wider range of trusted sources would not be out of line. I wish them luck.
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