Lots of people at MSN Search have been writing me back explaining why PLAY doesn’t pull up a stock quote chart on MSN …
(query result here). They pointed out that most stock symbols will pull up a chart. Here’s MSN’s result for searching for AAPL, which is Apple Computer’s stock symbol, to demonstrate.
But why not for PLAY? That’s PortalPlayer’s symbol.
Well, they say that most people searching for Play are coming there for some other reason and they want to make sure that their engine always returns the most relevant result.
On one hand this explanation makes me cheer. It’s what I have been wanting to hear for a long time. That we have a PHILOSOPHY! Here’s the philosophy in algorithms. That relevancy should be sacrosanct.
But, on the other hand, I’m not sure that this is the best philosphy to have. I’d rather the engine be consistent. I often search on stock symbols. Why? Cause I watch money shows and they use the stock symbols on the screen and that’s how I learn more about the company that is going by.
Anyway, this demonstrates just how difficult it is to make a great search engine. Those pesky users always wanting more.
Oh, and neither Google, nor MSN, have a stock chart when you search for “PortalPlayer, Inc.” Shows that there’s still more to do.
Oh #2. Watch Ask Jeeves for another trend in search engines: providing answers to questions. Ask it who the inventor of the cotton gin is, for instance, and you get a Web answer in bold.
Update: there are more details on instant answers and PLAY on the MSN Search Blog.
Robert Scoble is the founder of the Scobleizer blog. He works as PodTech.net’s Vice President of Media Development.
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