We will soon be embarking on a short trip to Hawai'i. Naturally, I'm turning to search engines to find out about the best beaches to go to. However, it turns out that this simple problem - where to go on vacation - is terribly under supported by today's search engines.
Firstly, there is the problem with the Web Proposition. The web proposition - the reason for traditional web search engines to exist at all - states that there is a page containing the information you seek somewhere online. While there are many pages that list the 'best beaches in Hawai'i' as the analysis below demonstrates these are just sets of opinions - often very different in nature. An additional problem with the Web Proposition is that information and monetization don't always align. Many of the 'best' beaches pages are really channels through which hotel and real estate commerce is done. Thus a balance is needed between objective information and commercial interests.
Secondly, beaches are not considered local entities by search engines. While the query {beaches in kauai} is very similar in form to the query {restaurants in kauai} the later generates results of entities of type <restaurant> while the former generates results of entities of type <businesses that have beach or kauai in their name or associated content>. While local search sounds like search over entities which have location, it is largely limited to local entities with commercial intent.
Finally, there is general confusion due to the fact that the state of Hawai'i contains a sub-region (an island) called Hawai'i.
To get to the answer to my original search query, I reviewed 8 sites which resulted in a search on Bing or Google for the query {best beaches hawaii}. I then reviewed each of these and created a spread sheet tabling all the beaches and whether they were voted for by the site.
Of the 57 beaches that were mentioned on at least one site, the average number of mentions was 1.89. This indicates a general lack of consensus regarding which are the best beaches. In fact, most beaches (38 out of 57) have only a single vote. Consequently, while there might be a set of pages returned by search engines for queries looking for such information, a user will be reading - in isolation - very different opinions with no aggregate view summarizing them.
The top beaches are summarized in the following table showing the beach and the total votes.
Search engines could do a far better job by:
- Generalizing local search to include any entity which has location, not just commercial entities.
- Leveraging editorial content (like that reviewed in this post) so that variance may be exposed to the user but aggregates can also be synthesized.
In addition, there is a very large opportunity here in analyzing the content associated with these local entities to determine which beaches are best for different activities, their accessibility, and so on.
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!
Posted by: Mattmcgee | August 25, 2012 at 02:40 PM
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.
Posted by: John A. Tamplin | August 25, 2012 at 04:04 PM
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.
Posted by: ELegacy_India | August 29, 2012 at 12:15 PM