Guruji Search ?

Is it wise to compete with Google as a search engine?

I just got lured into participating in a contest at guruji.com, an Indian Search engine and at the end of it all came to know that the Apple iPod can be mine only if I refer the most number of people to play this game. I am too old and too disinterested to do that. But then the contest appears to have accomplished one feat. It's got me to know about guruji.com. Now that's good for the Search Engine. But what about my using Guruji search in the future. I doubt it.

I did a search on Google with the words, Kerala + Ayurveda. The search on Google took 0.17 seconds and came back with 1,150,000 results. The same search on Guruji took me more time (though the the search was not timed ), I felt that, and it returned with 73,882 results. That's a whopping difference of 1,076,118 results.

Why would I then persist with Guruji search? Sure searches would get better on Guruji in the future, but would it ever beat Google? Incidentally, the same search on Yahoo took 0.28 seconds with 670,000 results.

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Comments

Sagar Manikpure said…
Dear Prof,

Thanks for playing the contest at Guruji.com and for your post. Your observations on our search engine are appreciated. Just give us some more time and you will see us getting better :-). Thanks again.
Ray Titus said…
Dear Sagar,

Thank you for your comment. I guess one way to beat Google would be to get better quality search results. Especially India based results, which your search engine specialises in (I guess, you work at Guruji...based on your comment).

On the 'number' front, I think Google will reign for quite some time.
Senthil said…
Its interesting to note that quite a few new start ups are still harbouring hopes of beating google. I believe guruji.com focus on India wouldn't pay off that much! How many of one's search on a search portal is india centric? Or rather, isn't one looking for information from across the world?

But there surely has to be a positioning rung which guruji.com can occupy. But is the "Indian Search Engine" Tag good enough?
hasta said…
dear Prof,

We always welcome criticism - contructive or destructive. And surely yours falls in the first category. I would like to point out one thing. It is better to rank results based on the relevance and usefulness of results rather than the number of results returned. actually dont you think it would be best if i have an oracle that tells me what exactly you are looking for and just give one result that would satisfy your query? Also although i agree time is an important factor, anything under 1 or 2 seconds is equal as the time required to act on the results by the user is actually many times that. I am by no means claiming that guruji's search results are better than google but more often than not we are as good if not better at india-centric searches.

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