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August 25, 2012

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Mattmcgee

Having been to Hawaii twice in the past year, I can empathize, Matthew.

Part of the problem, though, is that "best" is completely subjective, so no wonder that there's no consensus. Travelers (and even locals) might rate the "best" beach as the one that

* has the smallest crowds
* has the biggest crowds (i.e., with lifeguards and other services like board rentals)
* has the best snorkeling (and then that's another subjective mess)
* has the best sunsets (ditto)
* has the whitest sand
* has the easiest parking/access
* has the calmest water
* etc.

You know all that, though, and I do agree with that search engines can clearly improve in this area. (That said, I don't often agree with what Yelp, Citysearch, Google Local, etc. define as the best hotels, restaurants, and so forth. It's all subjective. Would be nice if the rankings would change more based on my check-ins, reviews, etc.)

ANYWAY ... two things I can recommend:

1) www.govisithawaii.com -- awesome website by Sheila Beal covering all of the islands

2) Kauai Revealed -- awesome book by Hawaii residents. Actually, I've not used their Kauai book but their Maui book is amazing.

I wrote about these two resources here:

Two Terrific Resources for Planning a Hawaiian Vacation
http://www.mattmcgee.com/planning-hawaiian-vacation/

Hope it helps and enjoy Hawaii!

John A. Tamplin

I don't know, I just tried "best beach on oahu" in Google, and it gave very good results - I would say 9 of the first 10 results give exactly what you are looking for. As far as disagreement among various sources as to what the best beach is, I am not sure how a search engine is supposed to fix that.

https://www.google.com/search?q=best+beach+on+oahu

even the less specific "best beach in hawaii" gives very good results.


ELegacy_India

Even I tried searching for Beaches in Goa came up with the good results. But I agree that some times Google search gives poor results. I have experienced it many times and after all these panda and penguin updates still there are many useless sites ranking on first SERP's.

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