The Better Mouse Trap?

As far as I can tell Google is probably the most widely used search engine. It seems that Google uses a combination of both keyword and controlled vocabulary to find references to your search. Based on the keywords that you type, Google then suggest subjects (controlled vocabulary) that help to narrow your search. I would imagine that these subjects are derived from what other users are looking for when they typed in the same keywords as you. In my personal experience using this method, 90% of the time I find what i’m looking for very quickly. Bing and Yahoo search engines also use a combination of keywords and controlled vocabulary to find references. I conducted a simple experiment with the three search engines by typing in the “west” and observing the suggestion made by each engine. Google offered the least suggestions (5) but they all seemed pretty valid. Bing offered 8 suggestions two of which I thought were a little off the beaten path, west indies cricinfo and west indies cricket board. Yahoo offered 10 suggestions all of which seemed valid. In addition Yahoo was the only search engine that included a current event, “west liberty ky tornado”. So which one’s the better mouse trap? My crude, simply experiment certainly doesn’t provide enough data to answer this question. Whats more, why do we need an answer when they are all free to use?