Texture mapping.

I use this term as the title becuase it is suitably techie, and also because it applies to animating with CGI. It's basically a way of making a digital world appear more 'real'.

This phrase seems to sum up the approach that the outdoor advertising agencies have taken to promoting search engines, Ask Jeeves and more recently Yahoo, in their latest campaign to assert their position as a worthy competitor to Google. Unless you've never heard of search engines you'd be forgiven for just thinking that their outdoor, real life, and perhaps creative approach to marketing search as the lifestyle card was a feeble attempt to claw their way back to the top. What a joke.

Ask Jeeves, took the revolutionary tack, of thinking of search outside the box (hehe... geddit) trying to rebrand it as 'the find engine' presumably because they thought "users don't actually search for results they find them". Not in my experience they don't. In fact, Ask Jeeves is the worst offender for forcing you to literally search for something you could call a result. Maybe they got it right and I'm just too stupid, you do have to 'find' results, like you might find a needle in a haystack, or your mate who ranaway entirely when you closed your eyes to count. I found him in the pub, years later. These days it's the last place I look for errant mates.

Yahoo, obviously also thought that denying the antecedent was a genius approach to encroaching on Google territory, and decided to dot the London with arrows pointing out the obvious. Take an escalator down to the tube and the bright yellow arrow points you to mice! Sardines! Claustrophobics! Laugh? I almost *lmao*'d (laughed my arse off). I mean, wtf, who would search for these words? They've also got a massive sign at vauxhall cross saying 'vauxhall cross' and you just think to yourself, "D'oh. Yes." gain, why would I search for it if I'm already here? Why would I swop my current state-of-the-art serach engine for a state-the-bleedin-obvious one?

It's a travesty that these supposed top search engines market themselves so clumsily. It as if they really have no idea who their market is or what search engines are useful for. It's like they look at google and give up. They try to get users to switch by focussing on results, as indicative of their ability to find stuff, but they don't even compare the results themselves or report on the findings. If they did they would see that for fairly basic things like finding the website for something you know (let's say Montcalm hotel in London) is ten times easier on Yahoo, MSN, or Ask Jeeves, than it is on Yell or Google (even on uk only).

This is the major downside of Google. Sometimes it's a bit too clever. It gives you an essay when a one word answer would do. I'm feelinglucky, must simply be an in-joke, because it rarely ever is lucky. It is often the case that the actual website of a company is harder to find on google than it is on any other engine. Why don't the other portals play to that weakness?

MSN does not need to build a google killer. it just needs to convince internet users that certain searches that are relevant to real life and the real world are easier to perform on their technology. It's nothing to do with technology. It's all about relevance, and that ultimately is a more than a technical problem- it's a marketing one.

A search engine spider cannot comprehend a users dissatisfaction with results in the way that a human can. The crawler just doesn't get how frustrating it is browsing for flights or holidays, and decent prices on hotel rooms, or the actual website of this damn company. So why make this an overly technical problem? Why not market a solution? People have tried Google for certain stuff and it still pisses them off, so they could be persuded to try that same search on a different engine.

So guys, keep it relevant, do we really give a monkeys about mice and sardines? No. So why don't you suggest we search something we really care about. Like the progress on developing air conditioning for the london underground.