Donna
McPartland
SLM
521
Search
Engine
Search
Engines
I
have chosen the following categories of search engines: medical, general, kid
safe, image, and meta search
engines.
Medical
Search Engines
This
is my top pick for several reasons.
The categorization format is easy to comprehend – there are categories
and sub categories. It is easy to
navigate; there are tabs on all pages making it easy to switch categories
without going back to the home page.
There are many, many links to related sites, including health check
tools, health related news (some articles are displayed for 30 days and others
for 90 days), and interactive health tutorials. Finally, this site appears to be a
reliable source for medical information since it is listed as a service of the
US National Library of Medicine and the National Institute of Health.
http://www.medlineplus.gov
This,
my second choice, is a medical search engine run by a network of US Board
Certified Physicians and Allied Health Professionals. Topics for each of the categories are
found in A-Z lists, and are massive in numbers (over 16,000 medical terms; over
2500 common drugs; over 700 diseases and conditions listed). It took longer to find what I was
searching for on this engine than my first choice, but once I found it there was
tons of information (819 articles on dry mouth). A nice feature with this website is you
can have a free health newsletter delivered to your email box. http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/hp.asp
General
Search Engines
In
my research of general search engines, Google seemed to be everybody’s favorite,
and after my search for the best in this category I chose Google as well. It has the largest database, and is very
fast in listing relevant sites. It
is easy to use; you don’t have to use quotation marks for phrases, or the word
and or (+). Search features include travel
information, images, weather, calculator, spell check, definitions, and similar
pages. The About Google link
gives all the help and information you want and need to know to navigate
smoothly around the site. For
one of my queries Google found 1100 related articles in 0.08 seconds and asked
if I wanted them sorted by relevance or by date!
http://www.google.com
This
is my second choice for general search engines. This search engine includes specialty
searches: image finder, MP3/audio finder, video finder, and people finder. One of the features was the Near search which limits the results (keywords must appear
within 10 words of each other). I
found this very helpful since phrase searches sometimes give more results than I
want, and and searches too few. It includes a translation
link that translates websites (5 different languages) to English and vise
versa. If you want to extend
your search, Altavista links you to Yahoo.
http://www.altavista.com
Kid
Safe Search Engines
This
is my first choice of search engines for kids. It has 13 topics, from games to
horoscope, and includes a directory and an index. The feature, School Bells, is linked to
sites in different subject areas and contains a myriad of activities for
learning and reinforcing skills, including fun games. According to yahoo, the sites are
hand-picked, making it appropriate for kids. The pictures, characters, and animation
make this a motivational search engine for kids. It is geared for children age 7 to
12.
http://yahooligans.yahoo.com
This
search engine is done by librarians; it has 15 categories from which kids can
search, and over 600 articles. It
includes an A-Z browser for ease in navigation. I was impressed with this search engine
when I noticed that reading levels are included in the description of the
links! This feature is one reason I
chose this search engine. My
interns are working with middle and high school students, and so many of the
kids sites are at the elementary level.
This one won’t offend middle school students as it’s not full of cute
juvenile pictures and characters as are many of the kids’ sites. Kids can chat on this site; they have
the opportunity to ask questions or to view others’ questions and answer them if
they like. http://www.kidsclick.org
Image
Search Engines
I
chose Google Image because it is so fast and results in thousands of
images! It has a SafeSearch Filtering feature that lets you choose strict
filtering, moderate filtering, or no filtering. The preferred filtering is displayed on
the image webpage. The advanced
search will help limit the results and is user-friendly. The text and messages can be displayed
in just about any language. I like
that there were no sponsored links in my searches on this site. When I searched bicycle pictures I
didn’t see any bikes for sale. By
clicking definitions I found more than I would ever need to know about bikes,
including a dictionary,
encyclopedia, history of bikes, articles on bike construction and technology,
etc. http://www.google.com/imghp?hl=en&tab=wi&q
This
was my second choice for image search engines. It is fast and has oodles of
pictures! I found the help link to
be very useful in working with pictures once you found them. You can personalize your image searches
and when you visit the site again your settings are reloaded. There are options under basic settings,
advanced settings, language, look and feel, and keyboard shortcuts. Among the options are text size, search
type displayed, window preferences (can open in a shared window), offensive
content filter, and the option to highlight your search terms throughout the
document. A nice feature is the
keyboard shortcuts which help you navigate without using the mouse. The search results of this site are
provided by Yahoo. http://www.alltheweb.com/?cat=img
This
is my top choice for meta search engines. Dogpile uses
eight different search engines and various subject directories to find
results. It searches other search
engines quickly and the results are easy to read. You have the option of sorting by
relevance (to your topic) or source (search engines used). For news searches you can sort by
relevance or date. Dogpile helps you narrow your search with the organizational
function provided in the What are you looking for? box. Something I like about this site is the
sponsored results are clearly labeled and off to the side of the page. The yellow and white pages are helpful
if you’re looking for relevant businesses or individuals. You can find anything here – music,
videos, audio, news, etc.
http://www.dogpile.com
This
is my second choice for meta search engines. It is very much like Dogpile in that the search categories are web, images,
audio, video, news, yellow pages, and white pages. The advanced search and the options
under preferences are similar. It
has a similar organizational function titled Are you looking for? Both meta
search engines use Google, Yahoo, and MSN, but they differ in some of the others
they use. What I didn’t like as
well using this engine is the profit-making sites were mixed in with the
non-profit ones. http://www.metacrawler.com