Search Engines

Category 1 – Best English Plans and Printables

1. Altavista

2. Lycos

a. Both Altavista and Lycos came up with the most sites where I could find and print off lesson plans and worksheets. Also, both of these engines provided more FREE sites where I didn’t have to purchase something or become a member in order to gain access to the materials. Most of the other engines took me to more sites where I would have to spend money for materials. In addition, Altavista and Lycos were better at locating lesson plans on specific topics such as grammar or sentence combining.

Category 2 – Best News

1. Netscape (enhanced by Google)

a. This SE provided all quality news sites with the exception of a link to Reuter’s. One thing I was looking for on the search engines was a link to newspaper sites; Netscape provided links to New York Times and USAToday.

2. Google

a. As you might expect, Google provided quality news sites, but also provided several sites with celebrity and pop culture news. While it did provide the same newspaper sites as Netscape, there were more “junk” news sites, probably because of the popularity of this type of news.

Category 3 – Best Shoe Shopping

1. Ask Jeeves

a. One thing that Ask Jeeves did that was different from the others was it provided several local shoe stores that I could visit if necessary. It also brought up DSW and Zappos, which are both good sites. I appreciated the way the results were organized through this engine.

2. Google

a. Google did not offer the local access that Ask Jeeves did, but it did provide reliable sites that all had free shipping.

Category 4 – Best Recipes

1. Yahoo

a. Yahoo does several cool things for someone searching for recipes: it displays categories such as chicken, beef, etc. for each possible site; it displays all the good sites such as Epicurious, AllRecipes, and Food Network; and it organizes them in an attractive way. I was impressed by the depth of information I could access on just the first search page.

2. MSN (Bing)

a. Bing provided good recipe sites. It also listed more specific results on the left-hand side of the screen, which was helpful.

Category 5 – Best Overall

1. Google

a. Let’s face it: Google is the best. I rarely venture to other search engines because Google always gets me what I want on the first search attempt. In addition, Google Scholar and Google Images are both great aspects of this engine for teachers.

2. Yahoo

a. If I have to use something besides Google, I’ll use Yahoo. It offers a wide range of results and it is easy to navigate.