Selecting the Best Search Engine
How many of you automatically go to Google when you need to search the web? If your answer was yes, you are not alone. Most of us are not aware that there are other search engines available nor do we have any idea why we would use something in place of Google. Of course the first step in conducting any kind of search is to know just what it is that you want to know or find out. Then it is easier to select the best search engine for the job. There are actually a variety of types of search engines that serve different search purposes. Search engines can be categorized by the following 4 group headings. Some search engines fit into more than one category. A brief description of each grouping follows. Four Types of Search Engines:
Hierarchical
Page Indexers
Natural Language
Meta
Hierarchical Search Engines: An hierarchical search engine tries hard to make sense of all the information it retrieves on the web by organizing that information and creating a directory. The directory may have categories and subcategories. Using an hierarchical search engine is particularly helpful when you are searching for information on a broad topic that can be broken down into small sub-topics. A good example of an hierarchical search engine is Yahoo where a directory created by human editors is provided to start your search. The search engine,
Lycos will conduct a search and then provide suggestions on how to better refine it on a column on the right. Most hierarchical search engines have a tab which you may press to retrieve a computer generated directory. AltaVista’s directory tab refers you to another Yahoo directory. Hierarchical Search Engines: Yahoo - http://www.yahoo.com Lycos – http://www.lycos.com Excite - http://www.excite.com Vivisimo - www.vivisimo.com AltaVista – http://www.altavista.com press Directory tab to access http://dir.yahoo.com Page Indexer Search Engines: Page Indexers are search engines that are known to search large portions of the web for information. They are also looking for a high degree of correlation to your search topic. Most of them offer basic and advanced searches and also a choice of different media. When you conduct a search using a page indexer, the list of matching web sites provided is ranked according to relevancy. Search engines measure relevancy by the number of times your topic shows up in the web site. The search strategies used by page indexers are company secrets and have not been shared with the public. Examples of page indexer search engines are Google, Excite and AltaVista. Page Indexer Search Engines: Google – http://www.google.com Excite - http://www.excite.com AltaVista – http://www.altavista.com
Natural Language: There are a few search engines that allow you to pose a question or make a statement. Then it becomes the search engine’s job to interpret the question and conduct a search that will bring about the results you are requesting. Natural Language search engines seem very user friendly but have their limitations. The searches they conduct are only as good as the way the questions or statements are posed; murky questions result in murky search results. The most popular natural language search engine is Ask Jeeves. Natural Language Search Engines: Ask Jeeves – http://www.ask.com Meta: Meta search engines receive your topic or key word, search other page indexer search engines for results and then compile those results in a list format. They can also present the information in a list of the top results from each of the search engines. Examples of meta search engines out there are Dogpile, and Surfwax. Like Lycos, Dogpile also has a
set of guiding questions to help you better define your search. Both Dogpile and Surfwax show you what search engines were used to retrieve their information. Meta Search Engines: Dogpile - http://www.dogpile.com Surfwax - http://www.surfwax.com Print Resources: Lanning, S., Bryner, J. (2004) Essential reference services for today’s school media specialists. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited