Rabid Wombat |

I read something earlier this morning that reminded me of a topic that I had wanted to bring up earlier: the speed of search results. It’s an old post, but still very relevant. Basically, Google ran an experiment that increased the number of search results per page from 10 to 30– but the half-second slowdown that accompanied the change caused a 20% drop in traffic among that segment. TWENTY PERCENT!

It reminded me of something that I’ve been meaning to mention on here: Live search is quite a bit slower than Google. Maybe I only notice it because I have a habit of searching both simultaneously, but for me it’s noticeable nonetheless.

Simultaneously searching on Live and Google yields noticeably different load times.

To the left is a screenshot I took of a really random query to both Live Search and Google. As you can see, Live Search, which should be showing on the left side, has not yet loaded, but the Google results are already displayed entirely.

To be fair, I hit “stop” in my browser in order to have time to take the screenshot– but that doesn’t change the fact that Live is significantly slower.

It may not be scientific, but I can tell you that I have a tendency to look at the Google results first– and now maybe I have my explanation as to why. If Google shows up first, how can I look at anything else?

I’m not sure if this affects anybody else who does not search both engines simultaneously, but if Google’s results are any indicator, then Live’s split-second delay may be costing them more than they think.

By the way, did you notice that Google’s logo looks a little bit smaller than usual on the search results page? Compare the above screenshot with this one from a week ago. The old one is a little bit larger. Could this be another optimization to speed up the search results? Seems likely.