Ask.com vs. Google, Day 2

After taking a closer look at Ask.com and the great layout of their SERPs, I’ve been experimenting with Ask.com.

I’ve been finding that the quality of organic search results in Ask.com is not great. Whenever I have a technical Web site question–for example searching for a PHP question–I’ve had to occasionally switch back to Google to find the answers.

I just did a search for “movie times in [city] [state]” and the #1 result in Ask.com was a page of text about gay porn that used an embedded Flash movie to redirect to another page that then used JavaScript to send me to Adult Friend Finder.

Reporting Bad Search Results

I wanted to inform Ask.com that there was a problem with their search results, but I couldn’t find a link to let them know that I was unhappy with the search results. Google provides a link at the bottom of their SERPs that says Dissatisfied? Help us improve.

I don’t know if anyone at Google reads most of the comments that come through that form, but they at least pretend to care and it makes it look like they are trying. MSN Search used to have a similar link on their SERPs, but when I just looked for it now I didn’t see it (they are instead directing people to their copy of Yahoo Answers). Yahoo apparently does not have one.
I think Ask.com should add a link at the bottom of their SERPs where users could report bad results. Even if Ask.com doesn’t have time to read them all, it might reduce frustration on the part of some users.

Back to the Movie Showtimes

After that one bad result in Ask.com (which can be forgiven when compared to some of Google’s results like for the keyword Viagra), I did a comparison of how the different search engines display movie showtime listings.

I did a search for movie times in tulsa across four search engines: Ask.com, Google, Yahoo, and MSN Live Search. I chose Tulsa because it’s a large enough city, but not the most common search.

Ask.com Search Results

I marked the screenshot above with three sections:

1. When searching for movie times, Ask.com shows an input field where you can enter your zip code. Entering your zip code takes you to http://movies.myway.com, which has good information on local movie listings and showtimes.
2. Ask.com allows you to narrow down your search results, but in this case I didn’t like the suggestions. If I am looking for movie times in tulsa I am probably not interested in reading about Tulsa University or the Tulsa Zoo. I think it would be better if they were recommending movie reviews, or a list of specific movie theatres.
3. The number one result in Ask.com was not a good result. It’s a site called The-Movie-Times.com that does a meta redirect to another page. The page is about Cameron Diaz. If someone types in movie times in [city] it is unlikely that they are looking for a Web site called The Movie Times. The number two result in Ask.com was AllAboutTulsa.com which resizes your browser window to 800×1000 pixels with the following JavaScript: window.resizeTo(800, 1000). Terrible user experience when clicking on either the #1 or #2 result.

My overall impression of this SERP is that it’s only useful if you use the movie showtimes zip code search box at the top of the Ask.com page.

Google.com Search Results

In this case the Google.com search results are better than Ask’s. Clicking on the main Showtimes for Tulsa, OK took me to a page that was similar to the MyWay.com listings provided by Ask.com, except that Google’s results allowed me to sort by theater distance, movie popularity, movie rating, and movie title.

The #1 and #2 results in Google’s organic results were pages on mrmovietimes.com, which had a list of Tulsa movie theaters. The #3 result was Cinemark.com’s home page, which was not very helpful because it was just one chain of movie theatre. The #4 result was fandango.com which, from a quick glance, seemed the most useful.

Yahoo.com Search Results

This series of posts is mostly about Ask.com and Google.com, but I thought I would include Yahoo and MSN in this comparison.

Yahoo provides a Yahoo Shortcut at the top of their SERP that leads to Yahoo Movies. Yahoo Movies is OK — similar to what Ask.com is providing with MyWay.com.

Yahoo’s organic results had Citisearch at #1 (are they doing paid inclusion?). #2 was urbantulsa.com which just looked like a blank page. #3 was another result from urbantulsa.com (Yahoo, stop doing that) but this page had a difficult-to-read list of movie times.

MSN Live Search Results

MSN Live Search was similar to Google’s and Yahoos. Clicking on the link Movies Near Tulsa, OK took me to the MSN Movies which looked similar to Yahoo’s. In the organic results, MSN Live Search gave me the same bad result as Yahoo — #1 was the nearly blank page from UrbanTulsa.com. The #3 and #4 results were Cinemark.com, but instead of giving me the home page of Cinemark.com like Google did, MSN gave me the Tulsa-specific pages. The #5 result was mrmovietimes.com.

Conclusion of Ask vs. Google, Day 2

Google.com did a better job than Ask or the other search engines in this case. If using the search engines’ own movie listings services the results were similar, though Google’s beat the others because of the way the information could be sorted. Ask.com’s organic results in this case were not good–the #1 result was not relevant and the #2 result resized my main browser window with JavaScript.

[Update: Amy left a comment below telling me about Ask.com City movie listings.  It’s a menu item at Ask City.  You can do searches like “action movie in zip code 33139″.  See the screenshot below. If they would more closely integrate this with their main search engine I would give Ask extra points.]

Round 1–Ask.com

Round 2–Google.com [Edit: after seeing Ask City’s movie listing feature, I make round 2 a tie if Ask.com would make that feature more prominent]