Jody Jankoski

SLM 521

Search Engine Project

 

Search Engines

 

1.  Best Metasearch Engine –   Mamma.com - The Mother of All Search Engines   www.mamma.com    

    

            Mamma was my favorite metasearch engine because it consistently provided the largest number of relevant results.  Many of the other engines in this category had the sponsored matches mixed in with the regular results, making it a little harder to find what you are really looking for.  Mamma provides searches for the web, news, images, white pages, and yellow pages.  It provides a power search where you can specifically choose which sources Mamma searches and can reduce adult content.  Mamma also has a separate health sites metasearch.

 

 

2.  Best News Search Engine – (tie)  Yahoo! News   http://news.yahoo.com/   and   AltaVista   http://www.altavista.com/news/

           

            I chose these two sites as the best because they returned comprehensive, current results from major news sources as well as smaller sources.  The two tied because they returned almost identical results in for every term I searched, so there was little differentiating between them.  Both also provided links to look at subject specific headlines such as technology, entertainment, and sports.  These sites make it very easy to search for news about a specific topic or to browse a certain type of headline.

 

3.  Best Image Search Engine -- Yahoo! Search   www.yahoo.com

 

            Yahoo provided a wealth of relevant results for the search terms I entered.  The results were easy to sift through.  You can sort results by size and by whether they are black and white or color.  It also includes a safe search option that you can turn on and off.  There is also an advanced search that allows you to choose certain domain types to search through.  This site provided searchers with the widest variety of search options and the greatest quality results.

 

4.  Best Search Engine for Kids --  Yahooligans  http://www.yahooligans.com/

 

            Yahooligans was by far the best search engine for kids.  The searches I conducted resulted in a wide variety of relevant, but child appropriate results in a number of areas including sports, children’s authors, and science.  This site provides many categories for browsing by subject.  There are also lots of entertaining categories such as games, jokes, and cool sites.  I especially liked that there was a news for kids section.  I think kids need to be informed without being subjected to some of the more violent headlines.  Yahooligans had it all for kids.

 

5.  Best General Search Engine -- Google   www.google.com

 

            I thought Google was the best for general web searches.  Google provided a comprehensive list of relevant web matches.  Google’s results are well organized and easy to navigate.  Google also includes safe searching options to reduce adult content  in search results.  This site allows users to conduct fast, easy searches on virtually any topic.

 

6.  Best Overall Search Engine --  (tie)  Yahoo! Search  www.yahoo.com   and Google  www.google.com

 

            I found Yahoo and Google to be the best search engines overall.  Yahoo provides good general search results as well as a wide variety of specialized searches.  Those looking to browse have a wide variety of categories to choose from.  Google provides excellent general searching and many specialized searches.  Google has a constantly growing number of  services such as Google Earth, that allows users to view a specific geographical area by satellite.