How the search engines stack up
08/13/2001 - Updated 11:23 AM ET
usatoday.com
The September issue of PC World, on newsstands Tuesday, rates a dozen of the Web's most popular search sites for relevance, advanced features, ease of use, percentage of dead links and freshness of results. Here is a summary of testers' findings (top score is five stars); complete results are on the magazine's Web site at find.pcworld.com/11060.
Altavista
Type of search: Engine
Rating: ** 1/2
Comments: Performed the worst of the pure search engines. Often pointed to home pages rather than to pages that provided the answer sought. Advanced searches require knowledge of Boolean language, but its "sort by" feature greatly improves relevance.
Ask Jeeves
Type of search: Directory
Rating: **
Comments: Returned too many home-page links and not enough direct links to information. No advanced search features.
Dogpile
Type of search: Metasearch
Rating: ***
Comments: Unlike other metasearch sites, Dogpile divides results by the sites it gathered them from, which makes them less useful.
Excite
Type of search: Directory
Rating: ** 1/2
Comments: You must perform a basic search to access the service's advanced features. Our hard-to-find search turned up dozens of adult links.
Fast
Type of search: Engine
Rating: **** 1/2
Comments: A close runner-up to top-rated Google, this engine excelled in all categories except hard-to-find topics. Produced the best percentage of correct answers with the first result, and returned very few dead links. Interface is simple and functional.
Google
Type of search: Engine
Rating: *****
Comments: Still the champ, Google produced relevant returns in every category. Interface easy to use.
HotBot
Type of search: Metasearch
Rating: ***
Comments: Best metasearch site for business, products and technology, but results were not as relevant as those of pure search engines.
LookSmart
Type of search: Directory
Rating: **
Comments: After recently switching to a pay-for-placement model, this site tanked on most of the tests. Works much better as a directory than as a pure search engine. Its human-compiled descriptions are useful, but it has no advanced search features.
Lycos
Type of search: Directory
Rating: ****
Comments: Our highest-rated directory benefits from using Fast as its search engine. This service gets the edge over Yahoo because of its better interface and advanced search features.
MetaCrawler
Type of search: Metasearch
Rating: **
Comments: Struggled with our search terms. It works better when searching for general information.
Northern Light
Type of search: Engine
Rating: *** 1/2
Comments: Known as a researcher's favorite, Northern Light did much better in tests when advanced features were used. Divides results into handy subcategory folders, but also includes links to reports and articles that it charges you to access.
Yahoo
Type of search: Directory
Rating: ****
Comments: Yahoo benefits from using Google as its search engine, but its portal features distract you from getting information quickly. |
