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A search engine for every browser The first step in searching the Internet is knowing which search engines are best designed to find the desired information. Here's review of some of the most-used search engines.
|
| SEARCH ENGINE | PROS | CONS |
Alta Vista
offers detailed searches through what the company claims is the largest Web index. |
If it's on the Web, Alta Vista will find it.
|
It takes time to wade through the exhaustive lists of search responses.
|
C/net's Search.com
Combines more than 250 search engines at one site to offer a single gateway to the information on the Net. |
Provides a convenient place to which one can go and launch a wide variety of
searches using other search engines.
|
In trying to make everything visible at once, the C/net area can become very
confusing and distracting.
|
Electric Library
Extensive database of more than 1,000 full-text newspapers, magazines and academic journals; images; reference books; literature art. |
Because it is confined to finite number of very reliable sources, searches are
fast and the information is all but certain to be accurate.
|
Very costly at $9.95 a month, while all the others are free. Also, it limits
sources, meaning that many queries simply return nothing.
|
Excite
Concept-based navigation technology offers a unique avenue to 11.5 million pages. |
Searches are very fast, due to special software by Excite's creators. Also offers
a wide variety of news, stock quotes and sports information.
|
Software that allows searching by concept as well as keywords tends to give large
numbers of hits that are irrelevant.
|
Infoseek
Each search gives most relevant matches, related topics to explore and timely news and views from popular sources. |
Allows searches to be done either across the entire Web or under any one of
half-dozen categories.
|
Not as many dedicated categories as on completing categorized services.
|
Lycos
Comprehensive, fast catalog includes text, graphic, sound and videos. |
Very large database assures more hits on most queries than with most competitors,
except Alta Vista.
|
In searches where too many hits surface, the process of refining searches is
relatively unwieldy.
|
Magellan
Offers wide variety of services, including searches by category and across the entire Web. |
Magellan's staff rates many of the sites on a star system, which allows searchers to know at least that somebody read what was there and found it useful. | Interface is confusing because a user is confronted with many choices, including a search box and a very long list of categories. |
WebCrawler
Offers a speedy Web search and a random-links feature to find new and unusual sites. Also features list of 25 most-visited sites on the Web. |
It's fast because it doesn't try to catalog the entire content out there. | By limiting users to the first 25 hits by default, the software requires a lot of jiggling with preferences if searchers cover a broad range of topics. |
Yahoo!
The pioneer Internet guide. Updated daily, it allows users to both browse and search subject categories. |
Categories make it much easier to browse the Internet by moving from site to site, grazing for data in general areas such as business or science. | Because the contents is selected by Yahoo's staff and categorized, the content one finds often isn't as complete as on less selective search areas. |
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