Dear John,
"Anyway, have you checked out most of the search engines these days?"
But of course my friend ;).
*****ALTA VISTA*****
TYPE OF SEARCH:
Keyword
SEARCH OPTIONS:
Simple or Advanced search, search refining.
DOMAINS SEARCHED:
Web, Usenet
SEARCH REFINING:
Boolean "AND," "OR" and "NOT," plus the proximal locator "NEAR." Allows wildcards and "backwards" searching (i.e., you can find all the other web sites that link to another page). You can decide how search terms should be weighed, and where in the document to look for them. Powerful search refining tools, and the more refining you do, the better your results are.
RELEVANCE RANKING:
Ranks according to how many of your search terms a page contains, where in the document, and how close to one another the search terms are.
RESULTS PRESENTED AS:
First several lines of document. "Detailed" summaries don't appear any more detailed than "standard" ones.
USER INTERFACE:
Reasonably good, but not very friendly to the casual user. Advanced query now allows you to further refine your search at the end of each results page. You can also visit specialized zones or channels in areas like finance, travel, news.
HELP FILES:
Complete, but confusing. Too much thrown at you at once.
GOOD POINTS:
Fast searches, capitalization and proper nouns recognized, largest database; finds things others don't. Alta Vista searches both the Web and Usenet. It will search on both words and on phrases, including names and titles. You can even search to discover how many people have linked their site to yours. You can also have the resulting pages of your searches translated into several other languages.
BAD POINTS:
Multiple pages from the same site show up too frequently; some curious relevancy rankings, especially on Simple search
*****INFOSEEK*****
TYPE OF SEARCH:
Keyword
SEARCH OPTIONS:
Simple, but powerful (see comments below). Infoseek now uses the Ultraseek engine, which really zips along. The site has added an extensive catalogue section for subject-oriented searching. You can also cross-reference your search terms with similar catalogue subject items and searches come back with subjects automatically appended. You can also search images, which seems to be popular suddenly.
DOMAINS SEARCHED:
Web, Usenet, Usenet FAQs, Reviews, Topics.
SEARCH REFINING:
Phrases, capitalization, no Boolean operators, but uses + and - instead (similar to AND and NOT).
RELEVANCE RANKING:
Gives numerical scores based on frequency and comparison to words already in their database.
RESULTS PRESENTED AS:
First 30-100 words of the page
USER INTERFACE:
Good, easy to use, clear.
HELP FILES:
Good, useful.
GOOD POINTS:
Fast, flexible, reliable searching. Good output, which gives the URL, the size of the document and the relevancy score. Allows you to see similar pages (based on topic information about the pages). Full-text indexing, allows capital letters and phrases.
BAD POINTS:
Can't think of any offhand!
*****LYCOS*****
TYPE OF SEARCH:
Keyword, but Lycos is gradually becoming less of a search engine, it seems, and more of a Yahoo-like subject index. Proud of its ability to search on image and sound files.
SEARCH OPTIONS:
Basic orAdvanced
DOMAINS SEARCHED:
Web, Usenet, News, Stocks, Weather, Mult-media.
SEARCH REFINING:
Full Boolean capabilities (using choices on drop-down forms).
RELEVANCE RANKING:
Lycos does not provide a relevancy ranking.
RESULTS PRESENTED AS:
First 100 or so words in simple search, you choose in advanced search--summary, full results or short version.
USER INTERFACE:
Clean, clear, focuses more on directory now than on simple search.
HELP FILES:
Good, informative, graphical help screens are easy to understand.
GOOD POINTS:
Large database. Comprehensive results given--i.e., the date of the document, its size, etc. Lycos indexes the frequency with which documents are linked to by other documents to make sure the most popular web sites are found and indexed before the less popular ones.
BAD POINTS:
Dropped relevancy ranking and moving towards a subject index popularity contest.
L & $$$ WCTI,, Barbara |
