It’s no new news that different Search Engines have unique ways of gathering information they store for use in a search query. Personally, I use Google 99% of the time. However, I discovered something interesting today which may lead me to query more than one Search Engine for my future research.

I wanted to see how a certain page ranked in Google– not the PageRank itself, but just “how far down on the list” it appeared when i entered some fairly generic terms into the query. I thought it odd that, page after page, I still found no results for the web site i expected to surface, based on my terms. After tens of page results, I decided to try the same query on Yahoo!^®

Using the same search terms, a generic query to locate the web site of a local musical instrument retailer, the Y!^® search returned the very web site I expected would turn up (based on my query) — as the very first item in the results. What Google^sm did not return at all (at least not within the first 20 pages of results), Yahoo!^® returns as the number-one result!

This rather large disparity warrants further investigation into the matter. I intend to query other Search Engines more often in the future so that I can get a better feel, technology aside, for what engines tend to produce the kinds of results I seek. Is it possible that Google^sm may not be the very best for everyone after all?