Searching...: a blog about search and the sun search team

Apparently not, said our customers in a recent study performed by allowing them to choose their tool side-by-side. For several weeks users were given the choice throughout the sun.com site to perform their searches using either Sun or Google search tools via a simple pop-up widget. About one in twenty users were randomly asked why they chose the tool they did and about their satisfaction with the results. Users told us that when they are on Sun sites they believe the Sun tools would provide better search results because Sun knows their own stuff better than could Google - and the users confirmed that message with their behavior by choosing Sun over Google eight to one. User satisfaction supports the story of Sun's good strength as a search tool in that for both tools the success rate for getting what the user needed was about 73%, and the overall user satisfaction score averages were 3.4 for Sun and 3.3 for Google, on a 5-point scale. Relevant, useful results and a clean layout - Sun gets user kudos for search.

I've been working with the Sun search team for about six years now. When we started the user cry was "make it like Google". Three or four years ago the general comment became "good as Google". Perhaps now we're moving to a place where we'll hear that Sun's search tool is "better than Google".
Of course, even that's not good enough for us, so look for Sun's new search beta coming soon!

For the Sun search team,
Ben