Top Ranking Search Engines

Category 1: Best in General Search Engines

·         Grand Prize Winner: Google

o    There is no question why Google has earned this esteemed award tonight. Google is the most used general search website due to placing the most relevant search results at the beginning of the findings page and within a very short period of time. Google also offers a toolbar that allows easy access to the search engine.

·         Runner-up: Yahoo! Search

o   Yahoo! Search offers many of the same services as Google, but the looks of the page are not as aesthetically pleasing to me.

Category 2: Media Search Engines

·         Grand Prize Winner: AltaVista

o   AltaVista was the first search engine online that was able to store every word on every html file to create more accurate search results. I enjoy the ease of using this website for media searches, and the results were very accurate compared to what I was looking to find.

·         Runner-up: Pixsy

o   Pixsy is a website that I was not familiar with until taking this course. This website has all of the top news stories in the World including videos and photographs. Pixsy not only has news categories, but also celebrities, sports, travel, entertainment, music and more.

Category 3: Government Search Engines

·         Grand Prize Winner: http://www.usa.gov

o   USA.gov is a great website to use as a government search engine because it has the government information broken down into topics and subcategories for easy access, but it also has a search function in case you know exactly what you’re looking for and can’t find the category to access.

·         Runner-up: http://www.usasearch.gov

o   USAsearch.gov is a similar website to USA.gov, but its format is more like Google with a search bar on the home page instead of different links. When searching in this website the results are broken down into categories for easier navigation through the results.

Category 4: Medical Search Engines

·         Grand Prize Winner: Healthline

o   Healthline.com is the best website I found for searching in the medical field. There are options to search for symptoms, treatments, doctors and prescriptions. There are even blogs to talk with others about medical issues that are on your mind.

·         Runner-up: Omni Medical Search

o   Omnimedicalsearch.com is a great website for medical research. This website searches the internet for webpages, images, news, forums, and medpro. The results are relevant and very helpful.

Category 5: Shopping Search Engines

·         Grand Prize Winner: Dealtime

o   Dealtime.com is a great website to purchase anything you can think of. This website compares the prices of all of the other websites out in the internet to help you find the best prices for whatever you are looking to purchase.

·         Runner-up: Pricegrabber

o   Pricegrabber.com is a website that is very similar to dealtime.com, but the search results were not as relevant. The search results were placed into categories, and it still wasn’t overly helpful when they were replaced into categories. One nice feature was the drop down while typing to help the searcher use the best wording for their search.