Which is the best Search Engine?

Most everything that is done to a website to make it better is because of the search engines. They are what drive the Internet. That is why there are tons of websites/businesses specifically dedicated to search engines and marketing.  Years ago I found the website  Search Engine Showdown.com which gives you the details of what is happening with them.  This is a very good site.

About a week and a half ago, PC World came out with an article Search Engine Shoot-Out, where they “pitted” numerous search engines against one another to see how they stacked up.  Who was the winner? Google.  They also had special categories, such as text-based, local, mobile,  blog,  video, news.  The local and mobile is what interested me.

They determined Microsoft Live Search for Mobile beat out Google Maps with Yahoo Local, Whitepages.com, Ask City and Superpages.com the others, and finishing in that order.

I found the article interesting reading. Regarding the local search, I normally use Google Maps or Yahoo Local more than Microsoft Live but I will give Microsoft Live a try.

The question has been raised, can you truly determine the best search engine? Phil Bradley, posted Return To The Search Engine Shoot-Out over at Search Engine Land and really ripped the article to shreds. Phil has some very good points and I agree with his comment, ” It simply doesn’t exist, yet there does appear to be this Holy Grail in the industry that we should all be trying to find some ultimate resource that will be the answer to all of our needs.”

I have not found one website that fits all of my needs either locally or globally. Have you? What is your favorite search engine?