Heather Hyatt
SLM 521
Fall ‘03
Search Engines
The Best Search Engines
The Best Overall Search Engine 
v Both are easy to use.
v Their home pages are simple to use and do not have pictures or ads.
v They both have good directories that find a lot of results.
v While in the directory both engines suggest ways to refine the search.
v When searching the web, both engines are fast and have a lot of results.
v AltaVista has parent control setting.
v Google has a page ranking system that helps to find good sites to use.
v http://www.google.com
v http://altavista.com
The Best Kids Search Engine
#1: Yahooligans.com
ð Yahooligans has a lot of topics on its engine. Kids do not even have to leave the site to search.
ð There are a lot of different topics on the site
ð Kids can also search the web. Once on the web the results have short descriptions.
ð http://www.yahooligans.com
#2: Kids Click!
ð Kid Click! has a great search feature. Children will be searching on the web. The engine lists site that are child oriented.
ð The descriptions for the site are brief but give enough information.
ð The descriptions give a summary. It also tells if the site has illustrations.
ð I really liked how the descriptions gave the reading level for the site.
ð There are 600+ subjects
ð http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/KidsClick!/
The Best News Search Engine 
#1: Yahoo! News
- It has up to date headlines.
- It tells you when the story was put up.
- Yahoo! has access to a number of other sites: AP, Reuters, AFP, The New York Times, Washington Post.com, USA Today, NPR, U.S News and World Report.
- The engine rates the stories.
- There are many sections to pick from. For example, there are top stories to comics.
- Each news article has a short description with it.
- http://news.yahoo.com/
#2: AltaVista
- It has up to date headlines.
- The articles have short descriptions.
- The descriptions tell the reader where the article was found and how long ago it was found.
- It searches a lot of newspapers.
- There are 13 different sources to choose from.
- Altavista lets a reader pick a region he/she would like to read from.
- Altavista has less topics then Yahoo!
- http://news.altavista.com/
The Best Shopping Engine 
#1: Yahoo! Shopping
q There were a lot of results for searches.
q The search results tell how many hits it received and how many stores the hits came from.
q The shopper can search by the type of item. For example, Apparel, Bargains, Beauty, Health, Ect.
q The results have a short description.
q The description has a picture, the price, and what store the item came from.
q It also includes a 5 star rating system for the merchant.
q Yahoo! also shows what merchants it has a buyer protection with.
q http://shopping.yahoo.com
#2: Excite Shopping
q There are fewer results than Yahoo!.
q The shopper can search by the type of item. For example, Apparel, Babies and Kids, Computers, Books, E-bay, Ect.
q If the search is big, then Excite asks to refine the search.
q It gives options on how to refine the search. For example, the search can be refined by price range, gender, type, and brand.
q The search continues to refine until the hits are not overwhelming.
q This helps the shopper get what he/she is looking for.
q http://shopping.excite.com/
The Best Meta Search Engine 
#1: Dogpile
Ø It searches a lot of engines. It searches Google, Yahoo, AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, About, Look Smart, Overture, Teoma, and FindWhat.
Ø Dogpile has an adult filter, which filters out adult web sites.
Ø The search finds about 100 sites.
Ø The descriptions for the results are short and to the point.
Ø The search includes a list of ways to refine the search. The list includes how many web sites are in each category.
Ø Dogpile can search by web pages, images, audio, multimedia, news, and shopping.
Ø http://www.dogpile.com
#2: Webcrawler
Ø Webcrawler looks a lot like Dogpile. They offer almost the same features.
Ø They both search the same engines.
Ø Webcrawler also has an adult filter.
Ø Webcrawler though only can search by web pages, photos and news.
Ø http://www.webcrawler.com/