useless web usability testing

the austrian chamber of labour has proven their complete incompetence when it comes to web usability testing. a study of search engine usefulness conducted by their department of consumerism gave the following results:

#1 msn.at
#2 google.at
#3 austronaut.at (! – aka ‘the mother of spam’)

the methology they used is simply crap: a very small sample of just 12 keywords from just one topic area (consumer laws). i can’t believe that people really get paid for such work – and that there are journalists willing to then publish it. (found via a link to help.orf.at on futurezone.orf.at – the ORF is the biggest and most reputable news source in austria..)