Still stumping search engines

We've had the good fortune to be offered two new Internet search tools recently. But has search actually gotten any better? Not from my experience.

The two entries into the search business are the so-called "computational knowledge engine" from Wolfram Research currently called WolframAlpha and Bing, the uncluttered search tool from Microsoft. Are they really going to challenge Google and, oh, yeah, that other one, um, um, Yahoo!?

I decided to give them all a simple search quiz. Each would get three queries and I'd get to judge the results. The first question I posed was: Who is buried in Grant's tomb?

Wolfram gave a single correct answer. That is, it's a gag Groucho Marx liked to use on his TV show You Bet Your Life because Mr. and Mrs Grant are entombed, not buried in their final resting place. Bing delivered a list of possibilities, but no visible answer on the return page.

Both Google and Yahoo! have search algorithms that appear to lean heavily on Wikipedia, making you consider skipping those search tools and move right to the popular Internet encyclopedia. So it was not surprising that each served up Wikipedia as tops in the lists they each offered. However, the summary Google provided included the right answer, while Yahoo!'s summation was different and did not give me the answer immediately.

My second test query was: lowest priced iPhone. Wolfram punted that one, noting in its arch way, that it wasn't "sure what do with your input," as if my search was beneath it in some way. Bing's response was one advertisement from AT&T offering $99 refurbished units and a list where pricing first appeared in the fifth slot.

Google showed me three ads, only two of which were relevant, the lowest price being $196. In the subsequent list the price did not appear in the summations. Yahoo! gave me four ads with pricing and a list with iPhone pricing in the number three position.

My final search was: winner 1977 Super Bowl. Once again, Wolfram was clueless and just as snotty. Bing however gave me the score for Super Bowl XI (Raiders 32 Vikings 14) and a translation of the Roman numeral in its very top response. Yahoo! put the winner in the fifth spot on the list and the score in the sixth position.

However, Goggle surprised me here. It assumed I was asking about the 1977 football season, for which the Super Bowl was played in January 1978 when Dallas beat Denver, and gave me that as the top result. I wasn't. I was thinking chronologically. Google tried to outthink me and failed.

All-in-all, I'd say search continue to require searchers to be very careful about trusting the results they get because it's still too easy to stump modern online search engines.