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Top Search Engines Compared
People
often ask us how come we know so much about a particular search
engine. The answer is embarrassingly simple: we read their
'Help' pages. They don't tell you everything nowadays, but
they tell you plenty and you can seriously improve your
effectiveness as a searcher by simply knowing what a search
engine is capable of.
Effective
searchers don't rely on just one search engine, but rather, select
from an arsenal of different weapons suited to the task at hand.
Here
are some features to remember:
(To the tune of Lou Bega's Mambo No. 5)
Altavista
for images,
Google's best
for directory,
With Moreover
you search the news,
And Dejanews
opinion,
Northern
Light has articles,
Profusion's
for metasearch
AlltheWeb is
fast, frill-free
A little of the lot will make you hot
Top Search Engines Compared
We will be concentrating on three search engines; Altavista,
Google and Northern Light.
N.B. Yahoo and Altavista actually offer BOTH a search engine (index of the Web) as well
as a hierarchical directory. Altavista's directory comes from the Looksmart Directory and
Yahoo's search engine is Google.
Google
| Main
Features |
Search
Syntax |
| Indexes using
site 'popularity' |
Boolean AND
default |
| Very fast |
"Search
Engine Math" - |
| Reputation for
good results |
Use + to include
stop-words |
| Subject-directory
for categorised searching |
Exact-phrase
search using quotes |
| Directory results from Open
Directory |
|
| Multi-language search |
|
| Domain restricted
searching |
|
| Read
more about how to use Google |
Altavista
| Main Features |
Search Syntax |
| Search Web or Usenet (newsgroups) |
Natural language |
| Specialised searches available (e.g. Health,
Entertainment) |
Boolean (Altavista Advanced ONLY) |
| Foreign language search and translation |
"Search Engine Math" (+ and -) |
| Directory results from the Looksmart
Directory |
Searching by field (use of search term in the title, url, image, link, etc) |
| Related searches and related pages |
Wildcards (e.g. photon* for photonics, photonic) |
| Time-restricted searching (i.e. by date) |
Proximity searching (for words NEAR each other) |
| Public company financial information and news |
|
| Image, audio and MP3 search for finding photos, pictures,
videos and sounds |
|
| Real Names support to take you directly to a company's
Web site |
|
| Read more about how to use Altavista
N.B. Many of these features available only at Altavista Advanced |
Northern Light
| Main Features |
Search Syntax |
| Foreign language search |
Boolean |
| Time-restricted searching (e.g. in last 3,6,12 months,
etc) |
"Search Engine Math" (+ and -) |
| Subject restricted searching (e.g. by industry) |
Searching by field (use of search term in the title,
url, text, company) |
| Special collection of premium documents (see a
list of publications) |
Wildcards (e.g. psych* for psychiatric,
psychiatry, psychology, psychotic, etc) |
| Search results organised into folders by topic |
Graphical interface for power searching |
| Domain restricted searching (e.g. by country) |
|
| Search current news (see list of news sites searched) |
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| Read more about
how to use Northern Light |
Honourable mentions
AlltheWeb has one of the LARGEST
index, offers search in many European languages and is fast, and will be
featuring natural language search.
With smaller indices than Altavista, Google or Northern Light,
Metacrawler,
Excite and Lycos nevertheless have a couple of distinct offerings worthy of a mention:
- Excite was one of the first search
engines and is still one of the largest. It has local versions (including Excite.co.uk),
an excellent News search which searches news articles and newsfeeds.
- Metacrawler is
considered to be the best of the metasearch engines which are accessed from the Web.
It sends your search off to a collection of the major search engines, removes
duplicates and ranks them.
- AskJeeves is a metasearch engine which
also employs a unique strategy: your query is matched in a database of
similar questions and you are invited to go directly to Web pages which have
the answer. At the same time, your query is also submitted to the major
search engines. There is a UK version also (Ask.co.uk).
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In this exercise we will examine the merits of using one
search engine as opposed to another.
- Using the special features of the following search engine Altavista,
Google,
Northern Light, search for one of the following
topics;
- import/export
legislation
- guidelines for franchising businesses
- advice for people running small businesses
Try to find a resource likely to be highly reliable, such as
a government resource.
See how the results compare. In each case, save your results page.
In particular, make use of each search engine's special features:
- Altavista's "related searches" and "related pages"
features
- Google's Page-Ranked Directory Structure
- Northern Light's Custom Folders and Special Collection
How did they compare? Which one found the most relevant result and did it appear
in the top few results? Which features did you find to be the most useful? |
