Live Search Doesn’t Default to Phrase Match?
Posted by manticor | Under Point Google Monday Jan 12, 2009So the other day I had a song stuck in my head. As it turned out, it was a song that I liked. The trouble was, I didn’t know the name of the song, or the artist that wrote it. It had been months since I’d heard it, but I wanted to hear it again. Luckily I had just upgraded to the iPhone 3G, so I could now download the song from iTunes even though I had no WiFi available.
Except I didn’t know the name of the artist, or the song title. BUT, the words of the chorus kept echoing in my ears: “Come back to me, it’s almost easy.” So like any good surfer, I tried searching for those lyrics in order to determine the artist name, and song title.
Using my trusty Firefox toolbar, I performed a search for: come back to me it’s almost easy. Here’s what I got:
- First attempt
Blam! Thanks to Google, now I know the both the artist name and the song title. I was sorely disappointed to find that Live returned nothing related.
But this got me curious… surely with such a large index they’ve got to have the same page as Google does. So I decided to search again for the same thing, only with quote marks: “come back to me it’s almost easy”. Here’s what I got:
- Second attempted search
Much to my surprise (and chagrin), Live indeed had the page indexed, they just failed to rank it properly. If it was outside the index, at least there would have been a good reason for not showing it the first time, but alas, it should’ve been there.
It looks to me like Live is not defaulting to phrase match, which I see as a major problem.
The cynic in me tells me that all things they do is to make a buck.
When I ran the same searches, I got an ad in the sidebar. When I added the quotes I didn’t get an ad.. no chance for live to make a buck. Coincidence?
The conspiracist in me suggests that you wouldn’t have quite the same trouble searching for artists under the Universal Music Group one the the family of companies associated with MSN.
Try doing a search for lyrics by these guys: Kate Ryan, Fall Out Boy, Muscles, Aerosmith, Def Leppard, The Killers, Mary J. Blige, Mariah Carey, ABC, Janet Jackson, Nirvana, Anberlin, Gym Class Heroes, Melissa Etheridge, Enrique Iglesias, The Human League, Juanes, Wang Chung, Bon Jovi, Queens of the Stone Age, Falco, Belinda Carlisle, Elton John, Yesudas, Eminem, Tupac Shakur, Guns N’ Roses, The Eagles, Dr. Dre, 50 Cent
I started to do a search for “Welcome to the hotel California” an Eagles tune and guess what was the top search once I got to “Welcome to the” it suggested “Welcome to the Jungle” a song by a band under the Universal Music Group currently promoting their new album “Chinese Democracy” and a music tour. Coincidence? You decide.
What happens once Google start snapping up media companies.