Search - HP or Google?

1. 86

   Mark Ewbieposted 7 years ago

   If you were hanging around in HP and wanted to search for something - TV's maybe or How to Put up Curtains - would you search HP, or Google?
   
   Basically, as a writer for HP... how much do you value it's content?

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   1. 59

      bruno1990lokoposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      I highly value HP content but I would still do my research on the Google. Why, because Google and HP are not in the same category. Google do search on milions of web sites and HP do search on it's own pages.

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   2. 87

      BRIAN SLATERposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      hi Mark, I think it depends on what your looking for, If for example I was thinking about buying a new computer or the ipad2 then searching through hubpages would make great sense.
      If however we wanted to find out when a feature film was being released on dvd you would be better off using the search engines.
      
      I value really highly opinions and articles on this site and I personally feel google has demised since panda.

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2. 91

   quotationsposted 7 years ago

   I almost always search google and not hubpages, but there are some areas where hubpage's search results are really very good. For example, I was searching for some smoothie recipes and found quite a few good ones on HP. That said, I would not have thought to search on HP if I had not stumbled on an article about smoothies while hub hopping and then decided to look up more hubs.
   
   The fact is that HP is not a search engine and is not a comprehensive archive of knowledge such as Wikipedia, so its value as an information source will depend on how well it can integrate itself into the search engine results. If hubs start showing up at the top of the search results just like wikipedia articles (almost any term you search on Google pulls up a wikipedia article in top 5, but HP articles are usually absent) then it will be doing well. Otherwise I am afraid that it will never become a goto source for searching information.

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   1. 86

      Mark Ewbieposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      That's a pretty good answer to what was a fairly stupid question.  I was trying to make a comparison between HP content quality and web content quality - with hindsight and bearing in mind recent web searches - HP ain't so bad.

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      1. 91

         quotationsposted 7 years agoin reply to this

         You are right. Hubpages content actually isn't too bad compared to some of the search results. But hubpages suffers from the problem of being too general or diffuse without being general enough.
         
         Here is what I mean: there is no coordinating theme or subject to the Hubpages site. You can find articles about (the horror!) debt consolidation, intelligent ants (a shameless plug for one of my hubs) and how to build a deck. Since the site is not about any of these things individually, but a little about everything, it will never be considered an authority site and dominate the search results on these topics. It will be beaten out by sites about building decks, for example. And this is its fundamental weakness in attracting traffic.
         
         Wikipedia goes in the opposite extreme. It is fast approaching the point where it will contain the sum total of human knowledge, or at least the sum total of human knowledge as understood and interpreted by teenage geeks who actually write the articles. The broadness of the wikipedia site actually compensates for it being diffuse and lacking an individual theme. It has so many internal links, and so many incoming links because it offers a little for everyone, that it rises to the top of every search result.
         
         Hubpages either needs to concentrate on a few topics and become an authority site in these areas alone, or it needs to go full wikipedia and encourage knowledgeable articles about everything.
         
         This response is probably completely on a tangent from what you were asking about!

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         1. 86

            Mark Ewbieposted 7 years agoin reply to this

            No, no - that was very interesting.  Panda, Google and Wiki, oh and HP - there's quite a game to be played out here.

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3. 56

   FStevensposted 7 years ago

   I would always use Google as technically Hub pages isn't supposed to be meant to used to promote invidual businesses and often people trying to attract customers give out the most useful and trustworthy information!

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   1. 97

      wildernessposted 7 years agoin reply to this

      "people trying to attract customers give out the most useful and trustworthy information"
      
      Are you really from Mars?  
      
      The first thing I ask my wife when she presents product information is "where did you get that".  If it came from a salesman I'm not much interested in hearing it as a salesman will typically say whatever is necessary to get a sale - actual, useful info is extremely hard to come by from someone selling the product.  Certainly you won't learn any negatives.
      
      In this respect I find HP far superior to a site actually selling something.

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