Written recently on CNET is an author claiming that the reason most people use Google for internet searching is habitual and nothing more.

I was forced to agree with this after trying it out for myself – but only after that. Originally my thought was that Google’s search is unmatched and there’s no way Yahoo search or Live search can compare.

But I was wrong.

After performing several searches using generic words (like computer) and then advanced phrases (like tampa red light camera), the results were surprising. No matter which I used, the relevance of the results – which is what counts the most – of the search results were up to speed using all three search providers.

You can think of relevance by asking a simple question when you see the search results, that being, "Was this what I was looking for?" If the answer is yes, the results were relevant. If not, they weren’t.

There was a time when Google was far superior to any other internet search provider – and this was for years. But it would appear Yahoo and Live have caught up. And in some cases the rivals perform better than Google. Example: A search for tampa florida on Yahoo returns a "Top Rated Things To Do" for that area; it’s useful and very visible. It also lists better-placed advertising for apartments and rentals; something many who search for Tampa want to know about.

Do you use Google for everything search?

You might be using it only out of habit.