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| Search Engines |
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| Search Engines |
Excite. Mamma.
HotBot. Google. Yahoo!
(Sounds a little risque, doesn't it?)
These search engines, in addition to WebCrawler,
AltaVista,
Lycos, about.com,
Go, Looksmart,
and some proprietary search engines (AOL, MSN,
Netscape), are among the most popular in use today. Each has unique
features, strengths, and weaknesses. For instance, WebCrawler is
considered an easy, beginner's search engine. Yahoo! is one of the most
popular with students. Ditto is an interesting visual search engine.
Google is the
simplest of search interfaces and one of the most effective. Ask is
considered by some to be the most intuitive.
KartOO and
Clusty return results in a more visual form.
Spiders and Robots or How
Search Engines Work
Search
engines work by sending out automated "spiders" or "robots" to explore the World
Wide Web and locate information, which is then stored in a database.
Different search engines use different criteria, but most look for relevancy and
accuracy and perform some ranking. Some are better than others at
avoiding redundancy. Some are subject specific and locate information on
one topic only, such as art or music. Meta-search engines search other search engines and eliminate
redundancy. Be
aware that almost all search engines accept "sponsored" or
advertiser's links and will feature these prominently in results. Sponsored sites--internet sites
that have paid a fee to be listed first--are now, unfortunately, the norm.
Even Google, which remained pure for some time, now lists advertisers
prominently. Be aware of this practice.
If
you are interested in an in-depth study of search engines, take a look at
Search Engine Watch.