Search
Engines for Horticulture
Instructor:
Mrs. Lori Powell Mayhew
Damascus
High School
Horticulture
Department
This
is a list of reviewed and recommended search engines. Use the category headings to select the best
search engine for your assignment.
Meta
Search Engines
These
search engines use metasearch technology to search the Internet’s top search
engines and bring you the results. In
one search they bring you a combined pool of top sites from Google, Yahoo,
AltaVista, Ask Jeeves, About, Fast, FindWhat, LookSmart, and more.
Breaks
each search down into subcategories called clustered results without user being
required to refine search. “Clustered
Results” is a very effective for refining searches in horticulture. For example “How to make topiary trees” as a
search yielded 177 hits, the cluster results broke down the results into
floral, pruning-shrubs, Christmas, artificial and more. This reduced searching time greatly when the
topic can be found in so many different areas.
I prefer the clean uncluttered screen without a lot of color and
graphics, very to the point page layout.
This is a very simple site to use and is colorful and fun with the graphics. It is easy to use and good for students with a low computer comfort level. The site breaks searches down into categories, and allows you to search in shopping, news, multimedia, audio, images and web pages.
General
Search Engines
Multiple
choices for searching, easy to use and the site is very comprehensive and
allows you to select sources, select black and white or colored images. Clean looking site, with filter control
ability.
Easy
to use, fast and brings a tremendous amount of information to the user. Page layout is clean, and limits
distractions. Commercial or sponsored links are on the top and sides of the
site. Advanced search features are good
and easy to use. The largest indexed source for textual documents on the web as
reported by searchenginewatch.com.
Image
Search Engines
The
search index is one of the most comprehensive, and it provides endless quality
photo images. Other sites bring
drawings and artistically interpreted images of plants. This is the best site for horticulture PLANT
IDENTIFICATION.
This
site has good images also and good second choice, or for artistic selections. Allows you to search for colored or black and
white images, and select specific image sources and size of the image.
News
Search Engines
www.google.com and www.msn.com
Allows you to search for news articles only,
and searches 4,500 news sources. Very
easy to use. Site brings you top
stories and include photographs.
Government
Search Engines
This
site is the official U.S. search site for all government information. Provides category searches, but will search
all 30 million plus government web pages.
Easy to use, and great for searching articles about USDA, import and
export of horticulture products.
Excellent source for reading activities and current agriculture
information.
Used
to locate government science and technology web resources; provides the
scientist, engineer and tech minded citizen with U.S. government resources. Very technical and specific search
engine. Not recommended for students at
the high school level.
Waste of Class Time Search Engines
This site is not to be used when working on class assignments.
Very
commercial site, junky appearance, and its easy to get distracted from the assignment
with other options like horoscopes, messenger, radio etc. Results are good, and you can personalize your
page if you wish. I do not recommend it
for students.
www.teoma.com