My greatest search success is when the information I need is in the displayed snippets. Others clearly agree: see DuckDuckGo's 'zero click info' and Google's 'One Box' results.
Next best is when the snippets make it clear I need to refine my search, rather than wasting my time wading through the result sites. Again, no clicks from the results, but a happier searcher.
So the Hitwise 'success rate' metric seems totally bogus to me – inversely correlated to the quality of snippets/OneBox.
I suspect Google's snippets are still the best in the business, though an objective analysis of that would be interesting news.
When powerset launched they had very impressive snippets. Now that they've been bought by microsoft, I wonder how much of the technology has been integrated.
Next best is when the snippets make it clear I need to refine my search, rather than wasting my time wading through the result sites. Again, no clicks from the results, but a happier searcher.
So the Hitwise 'success rate' metric seems totally bogus to me – inversely correlated to the quality of snippets/OneBox.
I suspect Google's snippets are still the best in the business, though an objective analysis of that would be interesting news.