Lea Ann Robinson
SLM521
Search Engines
The following list is a guide to the bests search engines in the categories of General, Kid Safe, Travel, and Maps/Directions. Included are the top two in each category with a brief notation about each.
General
Google- http://www.google.com- This search engine is so user friendly it would be difficult to find someone that could not use it. It lists closest to the top of each search those pages with the highest number of links to it, offering the user the most popular results. My favorite feature is the “Search within Results” allowing the searcher to narrow down their search one step at a time.
Teoma- http://teoma.com- This search engine displays the search results in a different way from many. The sponsored links are first, of course followed by those links ranked highest in subject specific popularity. This means those sites with the highest number of links to it from those covering the same subject. There are also suggestions on how to refine the search and a resource area that has a collection of links about the subject being searched.
Kid Safe
Yahooligans- http://yahooligans.yahoo.com- This search engine is a great kid safe site. Each of the links listed with every search are from a pool of sites that have been previewed to ensure that the content and the links to the included sites are appropriate for kids age 7-12. I confidently use this site to allow students, and my own children, to search for websites.
Ask Jeeves for kids- http://www.ajkids.com – This site allows kids to enter search requests in question format, making the need to understand keyword searching not as important. Each of the referred sites has been selected by an AJ editor for content and readability.
Maps and
Directions
Mapquest- http://www.mapquest.com- This site offered the option of an address or a city to get driving directions and maps. The results were easy to read with highway signs and a small map for each segment of the trip. All of the directions were numbered. This site was my favorite because of the ease of reading and understanding the directions provided.
Freetrip- http://www.freetrip.com- This site gives the user the opportunity to enter a destination and origination city from the home page of the site, cutting one step compared to other search sites. On the directions page, each segment offered a link to hotels that the user had selected a price range for in the initial search. There were also references to atlas pages and links to the site where the referred atlas could be purchased. I liked that there was no second page to go to in order to begin the process and the results were easy to read.
Legal
Find Law- http://findlaw.com- This site offers the opportunity to search or to browse by topic. The links provided in the search area offer news article relating to the topic as well as links to legal definitions and case law information.
Law guru- http://lawguru.com- This site offers a home page that can connect you to a legal question FAQ page, or a forms page for the most often used forms as well as a search area. The search area asks you to chose an engine to use, such as Maryland Case Law, and sends you to that page where you can again chose from a more specific area, such as state constitution or court decisions. This is a cumbersome process but the results are worth it to anyone with a deep interest in the topic.
Ixquick- http://www.ixquick.com- This search engine gives a comprehensive overview of what the general search engines offer. It provides the name and number of links that the general search engines provided with each link. It is easy to use and the feature that I most like is the ability to X the results that you don’t want when editing a search.
Vivisimo- http://www.vivisimo.com- This site searches the main search engines like other meta search sites, but offers clustering, which sorts the information into areas that might aid the searcher in finding what they are looking for.