THE BEST SEARCH ENGINES ACCORDING TO
LAURIE
LEWIS
Best Travel Search Engines:
tripadvisor: This search engine is excellent because it searches links to several travel web sites including those of Expedia, Orbitz, and Sheraton in order to determine who has the best deal on hotels, vacation packages, etc. Another great feature is that it offers honest and useful reviews by real people of hotels, resorts and vacations. In addition, it provides great tourist information with links to the web pages of such reputable travel guides as Frommers, Fodors, and Lonely Planet, and maps to help travelers locate sights and hotels. It helped immensely in planning our trip to New York for this month!!
http://www.tripadvisor.com
Orbitz: Orbitz is another good choice of travel search engine because they do a great job of finding discount airline flights, and they offer one stop shopping, including car rental, cruises, hotels, flights, and even maps of hotel locations. Plus, their airline prices are very up front about tax, surcharges etc., so you don’t get the feeling that they are practicing bait and switch. In addition, they offer the convenience of being able to do your whole purchase online. http://www.orbitz.com
Worst Travel Search Engine:
Bestfares: My least favorite travel search engine is Bestfares, because they advertise low fares to get you interested only to discover that the cheap fares they advertise become NOT SO cheap fares once they add all the taxes, surcharges, etc. to them. Plus, to get the low airfares they advertise on their web site, they make you call them and give a code number. Half the time they have trouble finding the airfares that they have publicized on their web site. This lacks the convenience of Orbitz where you can make your whole purchase online. http://www.bestfares.com/home.asp
OMNI (Organizing Medical Networked Information): Omni is a United Kingdom based search engine that allows visitors to search a catalogue of health and medicine sites. The sites have been chosen for their quality by individuals at the University of Nottingham Greenfield Medical Library in partnership with other organizations and professionals in the U.K. and elsewhere. The site is intended for use by “students, researchers, academics and practitioners in the health and medical sciences” and is not intended to be a consumer health site. Search results are not limited to U.K. sources. I like this search engine because trustworthy professionals have already reviewed the possible returns for accuracy, and the range of coverage of topics appears to be excellent. http://omni.ac.uk/
Emedicine Consumer Health: This site is dedicated to consumer health and is made up of searchable articles written by doctors for patients and consumers, each of which has been reviewed by two physicians and a pharmacist. This gives me confidence that the information will be valid. There is a large content base, and the page itself is very well organized and easy to read and navigate. The material at the site is divided into four subgroups or “centers”, Health Resources, Lifestyle and Wellness, and First Aid and Emergencies. Each of the categories is then broken down into subgroups. You can search the site using these groupings, or using a sitewide search feature, making information very easy to find. http://www.emedicinehealth.com/
Best Search Engines to Find New and Used Books:
Alibris: I love this site as it was of invaluable use when I was looking for books for my Children’s Literature course last year. I chose an author several of whose books were out of print, and Alibris had most of them! They offer used, new, and hard to find books, as well as music and movies. Their site-wide search feature is excellent, and you can search by title, author or subject, or you can choose to browse the site using categories, such as fiction, history or biography. Once you locate an item, they give you the price both new and used, if they have both. They will also let you give them a title of a book and scan their database everyday to see if it appears. If they locate it, they will let you know!
http://www.alibris.com/
Borders teamed with Amazon.com: This is my other site of choice to find hard to find books. I also used this site last year for my Children’s Literature course, and they delivered the goods! They offer books, music, videos and DVDs, and you can use their universal search feature or browse by categories. Once you locate the book you are looking for, they tell you who has it, what their customer rating is in terms of reliability, and what the price is for it both new and used (if they have both). They also offer a synopsis of the book so that you can make sure it is what you are looking for. Their search feature for other media works similarly. In addition, their main page offers numerous recommendations of items to check out, making it a really fun, but potentially expensive, site to visit.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/577394/103-4515626-3941456
Best Shopping Search Engines:
Amazon.com: With so many categories of things to buy, and so many good selling partners, Amazon is hard to beat. I typed in Stuart Weitzman (shoes) and got 80 results! I was looking for a portable DVD player and got over 100 choices back. They also provide an average customer rating of each product that is helpful in making a selection. In addition, they offer used and refurbished items, which is great if you are on a budget.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/home.html/103-4515626-3941456
kelkoo: This search engine, recommended by SearchEngineWatch.com, is a comparison-shopping engine that covers nine European countries, including the U.K., France, and Italy. As lovers of travel, we come home and then wish we had bought things we passed up. This search engine is a great way to remedy that situation! You type in what you are looking for, and they tell you who has it and how much it will cost. With nineteen sub-categories of products, including home and garden, health and beauty, and travel, you should be able to find whatever it is, here.
http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/
Best General Search Engines:
Yahoo: Yahoo is my search engine of choice. I have been using Yahoo since I got on the Internet in the middle 1990’s and I have had no reason to change. Yahoo seldom fails to return good results when I am searching for something. I generally agree with the way they rank their results, and I love their other features such as the white and yellow pages, and My Yahoo, which lets you set Yahoo as your home page and select what you want on it from a myriad of choices. That way the sites that you regularly need are right there on your desktop. I have tried the other general search engines, but Yahoo remains my favorite!
http://www.yahoo.com/
Ask Jeeves: The fact that Ask Jeeves let you search a question is different and sometimes suits what you are looking for better than using keywords. I also like their “search news” feature because it makes it easy to look for stories on topics of interest, and their “search pictures” feature because pictures that might match what you are looking for immediately appear. My daughter loves the kids’ Ask Jeeves because for school she is often trying to answer questions, and with Ask Jeeves, she can just type the question in. Finally, they have recently added an “Advanced Search” feature to help you narrow down your searches, which is a real help if you are not in the mood to search through millions of returns to find what you want.
http://www.ask.com/
Worst General Search Engine:
AltaVista: AltaVista HAS TOO MANY ADS, and all of them are listed first so that you have to scroll down a long way to see the real results. It takes more time to use because there is too much is going on on each page, and it makes it harder to read. Also, they do not organize their results the way that I find most logical.
http://www.altavista.com/