With the recent launch of Jonga, and Funnel having been around a few months now, it’s been an interesting time for local search engines. I thought I’d do a quick comparison. My highly unscientific methodology involved choosing a site I know, entering a search term I think should find it, and seeing how closely the results matched. I awarded 3 points for finding the correct page as the top result, 2 points for returning it elsewhere on the first page, 1 point for an indirect link, and 0 for anything else.<\/p>\n
First off, looking for the Noordhoek Environment Action Group<\/a>, I entered Noordhoek Environment<\/em> as search terms. Jonga was off to a disappointing start, returning mostly guest lodges and property, and an outdated article about the Kaolin mine. No sign of the NEAG website. Funnel was much better, returning it as the top link. Google did the same, in fact doing even better for a more relevant link following that. Ananzi had NEAG 5th on the page, with the usual range of holiday accomodation up front. Next, I chose the Ethical Co-op<\/a>, and entered the terms Ethical Co-op<\/em>. Not as easy as it looks, as the site is new, certainly hasn’t been optimised for the search engines, and has hardly any links leading to it. This time Jonga came up trumps, returning it as the top result, while Funnel couldn’t find it, but did find an indirect link to it from my blog. Google also returned it as then top result, while Ananzi returned nothing of relevance. Jonga: 3, Funnel: 1, Google: 3, Ananzi: 0<\/p>\n Next, I decided to get sneaky, and choose a blog that’s South African in the sense that the author lives here, but which does not have the .za giveaway – Cosmic Seriosity Balance<\/a>. Entering Cosmic Seriosity<\/em>, unsurprisingly, none of the sites returned the desired result. Somewhat surprisingly, Jonga and Funnel had my blog as the top result, as it contains a links to the correct page. Google returned other blogs with the correct link, while Ananzi provided an interesting diversion with articles about cosmic vacuum cleaners, but nothing of relevance. With Jonga and Funnel neck and neck, I changed tack for the fourth test. Looking for an IOL article I remember as one of the most popular of all time, entitled KZN cannibal caught in the act<\/a>, I used IOL cannibal<\/em> as the search terms. Jonga first looked like it had got it completely wrong, returning a top link mentioning the Athens Olympic Games. But somehow its actually a story about a cannible, probably wrongly tagged. Close, but not what I’m looking for. It only provided two IOL stories before diverging (my blog again :*( ). The top article did provide the correct link as a related article though, so Jonga scores a 1. Funnel disappoints, with an article about endangered species as top result, and not even a secondary link to the correct article. Google again reads my mind, returning the desired article as the top result. Ananzi tries hard, with some good guesses, but not even a secondary link to the right article. <\/p>\n Jonga: 1, Funnel: 0, Google: 3, Ananzi: 0<\/p>\n Finally, I chose a short-lived link. Bidorbuy was featuring an auction on a Rosenthal Glass Vase<\/a>. I tried Rosenthal Glass Vase auction<\/em>. Jonga bombed out entirely, with no results. Funnel tried hard with a link to another auction site, and a vase (not Rosenthal glass, whatever that is). The phenomonal Google got it spot on, returning it as the top result. I’m starting to suspect Google is reading my browser cache \ud83d\ude42 And Ananzi didn’t come close. With Google so far ahead, I decided to stop here. The scores: The results are clear enough for me. Jonga<\/a> and Funnel<\/a> are both vast improvements on the dated Ananzi<\/a>, but fall short against the imposing standards of Google<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With the recent launch of Jonga, and Funnel having been around a few months now, it’s been an interesting time for local search engines. I thought I’d do a quick comparison. My highly unscientific methodology involved choosing a site I know, entering a search term I think should find it, and seeing how closely the… Continue reading Jonga, Funnel, Ananzi and Google.co.za compared<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metal-technical","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/209\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nJonga: 0, Funnel: 3, Google: 3, Ananzi: 2 <\/p>\n
\nJonga: 1, Funnel: 1, Google: 1, Ananzi: 0<\/p>\n
\nJonga: 0, Funnel: 0, Google: 3, Ananzi: 0<\/p>\n
\nJonga: 5, Funnel: 5, Google: 13, Ananzi: 2<\/p>\n