Get a Free Pizza Slice from redToronto

redToronto is so confident they are the best local search in Toronto, they're willing to offer - wait for it - a free slice of pizza to anyone who proves them wrong.

We all know that redToronto's search capabilities are far from perfect. But apparently they recognize this too, otherwise, they'd be forking out something a bit more, um, substantial than a free cheese or pepperoni slice from Pizza Pizza.

We're talking about a $2.59 value here. If they were really that sure they have the best search in Toronto - after all, they're running radio ads promoting this challenge on a bunch of local radio stations - don't you think they'd at least be willing to back that up with, say, a $3.09 Big Bacon Bonanza or a $3.59 Pesto Amore?

Ok. Here's how you, me and everyone else who reads this post is a shoe-in for a free slice.

There's plenty of other local search options out there. According to their rules, we need to be able to prove that any of them are better than redToronto when we search for any of the following: "products, services, businesses, organizations, government offices and events in the greater Toronto area".

With those restraints, I consulted blogTO and three local search options I thought might do a better job: Google, Yahoo! and Sympatico MSN. Here's what I decided to look for.

1. Product: A good burrito.
2. Organizations: Information about the Serial Diners which we posted about a couple of weeks ago.
3. Businesses: the fashion retailer M-One-11.

First up was the burrito. Yahoo! proved to be totally useless. blogTO wasn't bad but it pulled up all results that mentioned the word burrito, so more relevant entries like reviews on Big Fat Burrito and Burrito Boyz weren't at the top. (note to self: must improve search engine on blogTO) redToronto came up with Quesada Mexican Grill - a servicable burrito joint - but backed that up with what looks like paid ads from generic mexican restaurants like Bandido's and Tortilla Flats.

Not only did Google's search return better recommendations (see below - a subjective analysis I know), but they put all the restaurant locations on a map to make them easy to find. redToronto has mapping functions too but you need to click through to a separate page.

Round 1 goes to Google.

Ok. So some of you might be thinking that my analysis of the quality of results for "burrito" were kind of subjective. Even discounting the obvious advantage of the mapping function, for round 2 the results look to be a bit more definitive.

For this round, I decided to look for information on the Serial Diners that Kristine posted about at the end of November.

This time I checked Google first and found Serial Diners listed second from the top. Next up was blogTO where it was the only result to be returned from my search inquiry. Last was redToronto which returned a whack of results for a bunch of local diners including 27 Diner (in Etobicoke) and Dangerous Dan's Diner which, incidentally, looks to have a pretty amazing burger.

Absent in the redToronto results was anything pointing to the Serial Diners. Uh oh, we know what that means. redToronto has now lost round 2.

Just to be sure, for round 3 I decided to move away from the food category and look for M-One-11, a great little clothing store on Queen West that we've blogged about a number of times on blogTO.

This time, both redToronto and Google came up with nothing. Yahoo! had one of the blogTO posts as well as a link to the Australia site while Sympatico MSN returned the best results with a link to the Canadian site right at the top.

Hmmm. It's lunch time and that cheese slice is starting to seem kind of appealing.

Ok. So here's what you need to do to claim your free slice. Cite any one of the examples above - or come up with your own - and fill out this form on the redToronto web site.

Bon appetit!