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Google Outscores Siri in Mobile Search Street Test

By Leo Boon Yeow - on 2 Jul 2012, 11:39am

Google Outscores Siri in Mobile Search Street Test

Gene Munster, a senior research analyst with invest firm Piper Jaffray, decided that he wanted to know just how effective Siri is compared to Google -- so he did a little test. The test consists of 1,600 questions: 800 asked on the streets of Minneapolis, and 800 asked indoors in a quiet room. The results he received basically gave Google a major edge over Apple's digital personal assistant Siri -- a B+ to Siri's D.

Piper Jaffray published the results Thursday in a note to clients: Google understands 100% of the questions (not surprisingly, since they are keyed in). Google replies accurately 86% of the time. Siri comprehends 83% of queries in noisy conditions, 89% in a quiet room. Siri answers accurately 62% of the time on the street and 68% in a quiet room.

According to Fortune (CNN), Munster noted that in order for Siri to be taken seriously, it has to boost its ratings from a "D to a B or higher." He also estimated that in terms of search learning prowess, Siri is at least two years behind what Google is currently able to achieve. However, he's also optimistic that Siri will be able to catch up after the release of iOS 6.

Currently Siri gets 60% of its answers from Google, 20% from Yelp, 14% from WolframAlpha, 4% from Yahoo and 2% from Wikipedia. "Breaking down Siri's reliance further," Munster writes, "Google provides 100% of navigation results, 61% of information results, 48% of commerce results and 42% of local results. Among other result aggregators, Yelp provided the most local results (51%) and commerce results (51%), while WolframAlpha provided 34% of information results."

Source: Fortune (CNN)

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