Patricia Jimenez
SLM521
Best of Search Engines
Google receives the
Grand Champion
Award for General Search Engines.
Not only does Google give me the most hits in
my searches, it is the easiest to navigate with lots of supportive services and
tools. Kudos for being
the most technically advanced, available, reliable, and fast. The language tools allow text to be
translated to many languages and you can view web pages in other language,
too. Tips on how to search are readily accessible. Direct links immediately connect you to world
news, local news, images, “froogle,” and more, more,
more. *****
Brainboost
and Altavista are my picks for Kid Safe
Search Engines. 
Brainboost
asks related questions and suggests related topics at the top of selection
page. It will offer relevant annotated
sites along with related site links listed in boxed menu fashion at the side of
the page. You can choose to open an icon
to read more about the site before you actually select it. I also liked that definitions were offered. This engine corrected my spelling entry for
Altavista offers a family filter. Even with the family filter activated, I was
able to access hundreds of valid sites about turritella
( a beautiful rock found almost exclusively in
The blue ribbon 
goes to Google for the best Media Search Engine with Yahoo! running as a neck and neck
second. Yahoo! has a colorful,
chock-full-of-information home page with lots of icon and image links. News, music, stock market reports, and
various entertainment guides were immediately accessible. I found it refreshing that my selected preferences were
recognized. Play on!
Honorable mention is bestowed upon Altavista. This engine has a link to MP3/Audio
selections in its home page directory tool bar.
CNN wins the Top Award as a
News Search Engine. Its home page looks
like a librarian’s news index. It has
the capability to translate to other languages and links to international news
pages. At the the
bottom of the home page you will find links to Time and Fortune magazines.
Webcrawler earns special mention as one of the
better Meta Search Engines. It can
isolate and compose results from leading search engines. The Webcrawler
results appear on the left side of the selections page with specific engine
buttons above the results. This page
also shows your recent searches and offers more specific suggestions for your
search in the form of a question. You can
choose specific engine preferences.
Also earning special mention is Dogpile. This Meta Search Engine has the cutest
mascot. It was slower in returning
preferred site results to my inquiries and did not always list my choices in
the order of importance or valid information.
However, it did offer an advanced search and tools/tips for search
techniques and considerations. The home
page also offered a joke-of-the-day.
Just a note:
When I was surfing through various
engines, I searched for information on the following subjects: grapevine arbor, Helmuth
Rilling,
