Olympic Medal Winning

Search Engines

This is a list of medal winners in the Olympic Search Engine competition. They were chosen based on ease of use and relevancy of results.

Meta Search Engines

Gold Medal - Dogpile

Dogpile is fast and easy to use. It searches Google, Yahoo!, MSN, and Ask Jeeves. It has many extra features such as images, video, audio, news, white pages and yellow pages. It produced good results without lots of sponsored links. http://www.dogpile.com/

Silver Medal – Mamma Metasearch

Mamma comes in a close second to Dogpile . It is fast and easy to use and searches the major search engines. It has images, news, white pages and yellow pages. It does have some sponsored links but still produced good results. http://www.mamma.com/

Bronze Medal – Ixquick

Ixquick is also fast and easy to use. It searches Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, Yahoo!, Gigablast and some smaller engines. It has a section of images and an international phone book. Its best feature is the shopping section that looks for the lowest prices all over the world. It is also able to translate into other languages with a click of the button.

http://us.ixquick.com/eng/?cat=web

General Search Engines

Gold Medal – Google

Google is the best search engine. It is fast and well organized. The results are very topic relevant. Each page has a “similar pages” option, which gives more listings on the topic. The extra features include images, a group finder, news, shopping (Froogle), local information and more. http://froogle.google.com/webhp?hl=en&btnG=Google+Search

Silver Medal – Yahoo!

Yahoo! is also fast and well organized. The results are relevant to the topic. It’s home page is chock full of extras. It has images, audio, video, news, and shopping and local information. There are lots of extra services available through links on the home page. http://www.yahoo.com/

Bronze Medal – Teoma Search

Teoma is a smaller engine but it has some nice features. The search results are well organized and useful. On the search results page, there is a list of additional resources available for each topic. The additional resources add extra substance to the search results. http://www.teoma.com/

Kid Safe Search Engines

Gold Medal- Cyberkids

Cyberkids is a fun safe search engine. The home page has lots of fun graphics. It links to staff reviewed sites for children ages 7-12. It has many extra features such as games, shopping, and a posting of children’s artwork, homework help and online tutors. http://www.cyberkids.com/

Silver Medal – Yahooligans!

Yahooligans! is also a fun search engine which is used by lots of schools. The results are easy to understand and navigate. It has many extras such as games, music, videos, jokes and kid friendly news. The reference section contains maps, dictionaries and encyclopedias. http://yahooligans.yahoo.com/

Bronze Medal – KidsClick!

KidsClick! was created by librarians. It is not as flashy as the other search engines but it is well designed. It is organized into research topics like a library. The results are listed alphabetically for easier searching. http://kidsclick.org/

Government Search Engines

Gold Medal – The Library of Congress

The Library of Congress’ search engine is an invaluable resource for research. It allows you access to the federal government’s massive archives. The Global Gateway provides links to digital collections all over the world. The American Memory section contains digital collections of material such as letters, diaries and audio and video recordings. http://www.loc.gov/index.html

Silver Medal – First Gov for Kids

First Gov was created to help kids to learn about the government. It is well designed and easy to use. It has many valuable links to help with research but it also has fun stuff. It has a section of fun links such as a zoo camera to watch the pandas. http://www.kids.gov/

Bronze Medal – Fed World

This a well designed site with many useful links. It allows the user to search the 30 million government web pages as well as Supreme Court decisions and IRS regulations. It also provides links to science and technology resources. http://www.fedworld.gov/

Education Search Engines

Gold Medal – Education World

Education World provides lots of resources for teachers. It has lesson plans, professional development sites and technology tips. It is well designed and easy to use. It also contains links for lessons on monthly topics such as Black History month. http://www.education-world.com/

Silver Medal – The Internet Public Library

This is a well-designed site with lots of links. It has a large reference section with almanacs, dictionaries, calendars and more. There are special sections for kids and teens. The teen space even includes a discussion page for teen issues. http://www.ipl.org/

Bronze Medal – The Educator’s Reference Desk

The Educator’s Reference Desk provides links for a variety of educational topics. The subject tabs make the site easy to navigate. The links cover everything from lesson plans to technology. http://www.eduref.org/index.shtml

Avis Horowitz compiled this list.

SLM 521 Spring 2006