The Wall St. Journal reported Monday that Yahoo Claims It Tops Google In Range of Search Capability. Basically, they now claim they’re searching 19 billion pages, compared to Google’s paltry 8.2 billion, and Microsoft’s 5 billion pages. (WSJ didn’t put the story online in its public section, but here’s the link to the article at CNNMoney.

Despite Google’s retort that it just isn’t true, does anyone really care about this ongoing pissing match? Microsoft was uncharacteristically quiet in response to Yahoo’s claim.

I mean, do we really need 19 billion pages of results? With most searchers not going past page one, who cares how many other results there are?

Most of us would rather have better–not more–search results.

If I search for "used X-Box games Maine" I want a list of local
stores that sell used video games, along with addresses and phone
numbers." If I search for "vegetarian chili recipes" I don’t want the
first four results to include meat. If I search for "Rich Brooks" I
want to see me number one, not some journeyman football coach.

As Web site owners, we all want our sites to rank first, or at least on page one. As Web surfers, we only want to see relavant results, not just results from the sites that have been professionally optimized.

Just once, when someone tells me that they want to rank number one
for "psychologist," "garden shop," "rodeo clown," or whatever, I want
to ask them if they truly think their content is the most relevant for
people doing that search.

Sigh…maybe Rich Brooks the football coach does deserve the number one ranking now that I think about it.

Rich Brooks
Number 2 & 3 (currently) at Yahoo, but Number 1 in Our Hearts