So if Google is the best there is, how do they do it?
Here’s one clue.
“A Google spokesperson gave us this statement about the test:

‘At any given time we are running 50-200 search experiments. We run more than 6,000 search experiments in a given year.'”

Since they report about 400 changes per year, that also means they are rejecting as much as over 90% of their ideas (perhaps several experiments are sometimes implemented in one update).
Takeaways?
1. Google takes a scientific approach to Search. Remember from school, the scientific method? Form a hypothesis, predict a result, run a test and see if your test confirms the predicted result?
2. They work hard at it.
Again, I’m not saying Google is perfect.
Nor does Google claim to be. In fact (obviously) running 6000 experiments a year pretty much proves they don’t think they are perfect nor do they believe there is no room for improvement.
But Bing, Blekko, and others nobody-ever-heard-of use advertising and PR to try and gain market share.
Which do you want to win the Search Wars?
I’m in the Marketing business myself, but marketing and publicity are for spreading the word on great products and service. Not to be used instead of.