After a recent online order confirmation, I checked the major engines to see which can link directly to the shipment tracking page by entering in the US Postal Service tracking number into the search box.
The results: Google and Windows Live tracked it. Yahoo and Ask.com returned no results. Google-powered AOL and MySpace (when searching the web through it – and MySpace IS a search engine) also didn’t return anything.
This is a minor benefit for Google and Live, but any search that goes unfulfilled, especially at the fault of the engine and not the user, erodes its credibility. Search technology’s an arms race and no one can afford to be left behind.
People reacted to this story.
Show comments Hide commentsI’ve yet to figure out the workings of various search engines.
I have my portfolio online under my real name- the url is just toadsrealname.com
If I search my name on Yahoo, it’s the second thing that comes up.
If I search on Google, it doesn’t come up at all. Even the url doesn’t come up if I search google by inputting the exact url. (And yes, I’ve sent it to them several times.)
Try here, they have a pretty sweet widget that works great: http://www.shippingguru.org/trackingshipments.html
Wow, I could have used this info last week… Hmmm