I think one of the most remarkable things about the web over the last 5 years or so has been Google’s continued dominance of the search space… and how such a dominant company has emerged from a patented algortihm system called PageRank. What makes it so remarkable for me is this nibbling feeling is that Google search isn’t really that good. That’s not to say there are other search engines out there that are far superior, but rather that I just feel there should be far better search capabilities available to us by now.

To give an example of what I’m talking about, I’m a pretty big basketball fan. I also know a lot of other pretty big basketball fans. Over the years I think I’ve probably been to every basketball related news site that exists, and I have a pretty good idea of which ones seem the best, and a lot of other people seem to have similar ideas. If I was to give a short list off the top of my head, InsideHoops, HoopsHype, and RealGM are among the better daily news aggregation sites, sites like ESPN and Yahoo! remain quite strong, some blogs like True Hoop on ESPN are particularly good as well, and of course NBA.com is the primary site for the world’s dominant league. I could go into far greater detail, but you get the idea. At minimum, I think I can tell a good and popular news site from a bad one.

In turn, if I type the term “basketball news” into the Google search engine, I expect to be directed towards these type of sites in one order or another. Instead, here is what I get on the first page:

1. CBC.ca News – Basketball. I guess that because I’m searching from Canada, the basketball news site tied to our publicly subsidized (cringe) news outlet gets an extra bump… because while there is some news here, and can’t for the life of me figure out how/why it would come up #1.

2. Slam: Basketball News. Yup, I guess there definitely is a Canada bias – this one’s tied to Canoe.ca, and I can’t see any reason to rank this site anywhere near the top-100 basketball news sites out there. Not a nice site at all. On this Canada thing, note that I get defaulted to Google.ca at the start, and have the choice between searching “the web” and “pages in Canada”… and if I wanted to focus on local, I’d pick the second. I didn’t.

3. Basketball News- Pro Football Weekly. Oh we’re cooking with gas now – I’m on link THREE and I’m sent to profootballweekly.com. Key word: football. The basketball portion is trying to sell me an NBA preview magazine, and if you click on the only available link you are taken here. Note the content for 2008 is blank.

4. Google news results for basketball news. The requisite link to Google’s news stories page. I can understand this one I suppose.

5. Inside Hoops. Finally – a pretty good basketball news site! Maybe it was just bad luck near the top, and I’m going to be overwhelmed by the great basketball content to follow.

6. Broadcast-Live.com/sports/basketballnews. I’m underwhelmed. What a truly awful site. Would anyone ever go here twice? It appears to use moreover technology to pull stories from all over the web… but it’s just awful. I particularly like how if you click on the NBA standings link, or the NBA scores link, you are taken to…  nothing.

7. Douglas College Women’s Basketball News. Now I have nothing against the Douglas College Women’s Basketball team per se. In fact, I congratulate them on their 7-3 season last year, and wish them the best for the future. But #7 on the basketball news search? How? How does that happen when you are using the best search algorithm in the world? Among others, we haven’t seen ESPN, or any other major sports site for that matter, yet!

8. ESPN NBA Site. Ah, there it is. Note to ESPN NBA Editors: to improve ranking, increase coverage of Douglas College Women’s Basketball.

9. The Toronto Star. Oh Canada, our home of relatively poor basketball coverage, is now on here three times and I haven’t seen a major U.S. paper yet – and their coverage is generally much better. Note again to Google – I will take better over local every time.

10. Carleton Women’s Basketball. Uh oh- I see a rivalry brewing here between Carleton and Douglas College. Goooo, Ravens! But seriously – we’re still in the top-10 here. Two somewhat random women’s college basketball news pages?

11. Frozen Hoops. I guess us Canadians like our basketball cold, eh? Just another bad site.

So there we are – the top 11 from the world’s most powerful search engine, and I would argue an impartial analysis would indicate that maybe 2 of them SHOULD be on the front page of a basketball news search, and at LEAST five should be nowhere near the top-500 or so.

Of course you might argue this is just a quirk in the system, but I find it’s a pattern that repeats itself. I have a pretty good idea of some of the top sites I would expect in a search for “online videos“. Maybe even Google’s very own YouTube, the #3 most popular site in the world based on traffic. It shows up only in the paid ad. I have a pretty good idea of some of the top sites I would expect in a search for “pictures“. Maybe even Flickr (Share your photos. With the World), which has a global traffic rank of #33. It’s not on there, but Icanhascheezburger certainly is. In fairness, if I search “photos” Flickr does come up number one… but again, you’re telling me that the best search engine in the world can’t figure out someone searching for pictures might be interested in the top photo site?

Anyways, you get the idea. Am I the only one that just feels that there should be a far, far better search engine by now? And if one does ever come along, what would it mean to Google and it’s $135 Billion market cap?