Search Engine Comparison

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Name of Search Engine Google Vivisimo
What is the URL? www.google.com www.vivisimo.com
What is it used for? Google is designed to be a one-stop search engine. One can search for images, terms, shopping, and a variety of other advanced search options, such as a government search engine at www.google.com/unclesam This search engine clusters results into folders for the user to make the volume of matches more manageable. The site claims that with their technology, the end user quickly learns at a glance what types of information is available on their topic and they can uncover resources that might otherwise remain buried. It appears to also function as a meta-search engine.
How easy or difficult is it to figure out how to search? The site is easy to use, and the advanced search option is right there to help narrow the search terms. It is pretty easy. Once you enter your terms, it gives a list of the most relevant sites, and then on the left margin, it clusters this hits into folders, so you can navigate through them. You can also change what Vivisimo searches for you.
How do you navigate through it? The main page has a search field, where after entering your terms, you receive a listing of web-sites in rank of relevance to your terms. The main page has a search field, as well as advanced options where you can modify the search strategy. It gives you the option of changing what it searches through, like MSN or Lycos. The folders given on the left hand side can be opened to see what sites it contains in that topic.
How many Web sites are covered? The bottom of the main page says 4,285,199,774, currently. Since they are a meta-search engine, this figure would be difficult to get because one would have to total all the numbers from the other engines they use.
What are some searching tips? Don't use the word AND, it does nothing on google. I always use their advanced search to limit the hits I get which increases the quality of my results. I looked at Google's search tips and found them to be quite interesting. Of course, the first suggestion is to add more terms to narrow the number of matches. But I didn't know that using the : helped narrow the search. The example given is if you want to find the admissions site at Stanford, you would enter: admission site:www.stanford.edu. Their help section has lots of interesting pointers. You can use the Boolean operators to change your search. AND is their default operator, but OR can help broaden a search. They give a complete listing of the operators one can use in their syntax section under help.
Can you change the default search logic?  The frequently asked questions section says that you can add - immediately before each word you donít want to include. Yes. In the advanced section, you can limit the other web sources it searches, and the number of results it returns. Also, using Boolean operators will change the default search logic.
Can you change the way in which results are displayed? I don't think so. I did a search, and didn't see a way to modify the way the pages were displayed.  In the advanced search section, you can change what is displayed. By default, the display includes the url, openers (new window, preview, etc), a summary, and sources (Lycos, MSN, etc). These can each be unchecked. Also, you can set it so your results open in a new browser, or in frames.
How many results did you receive? I searched for Himalayan cats, and got 39,900 hits. Obviously, that is too many. When I put the terms in quotes, I got 4,230. For Himalayan cats, I received 205. When I changed the settings to return 500 matches, I received only 405. When I put the terms in quotes, I got 362.
How current are the results?

You can limit your search to sites modified within a certain time period. This didn't seem to work though, because no matter what time limit I put, the number of sites stayed the same. However, the first site I found that had a date was last modified in April, which isn't too bad given the topic.

 The first site listed has not been modified in a couple of years. The second site listed could not be opened. These are bad signs.
What proportion of the results were relevant? Most seemed relevant, but I didn't like how the first two sites listed were amazon.com selling books, and these were not sponsored links. Based on their summaries, they all seemed relevant
Was the amount of detail displayed with the results adequate? Yeah, because google picks a section of the site that uses the term you searched for, showing what context the terms are in. Yes, and I like how you can modify the amount of detail displayed as well.
Was the order in which the results were displayed evident and/or logical? It was logical, but I wish that the merchants were listed separately, or something, because I wasn't looking for books about Himalayans, just information. Well, all of the sites had Himalayan cats in the title, so they were all relevant. It didn't give a % of relevancy, so I'm not sure how it ordered the sites.
What are the strengths/weaknesses? Both the strengths and weaknesses in google are the number of sites you can get. This can overwhelm some people, which makes it a weakness. But also, with the proper limiters set, the matches can be quiet good, making it a strength. I think for someone who is unsure of how to search the web comfortably, or the specifics of what they are looking for, this is great because it is very user friendly. However, I am concerned about the quality of the sites.
How often is it updated? I couldn't find any information on how often Google is updated. I assume frequently. Couldn't find this information on the site.
What is the e-mail address to submit questions?

They have several addresses they give, here are the ones on the help section:

 To ask a question, write to questions@vivisimo.com
On a scale of 1 to 10 (1=poor, 10=superior), rate each search engine.
8
8
Briefly describe why you rated each as you did.

I give it an 8 because although it is good, there is room for improvement. Just looking at what the students get at the school I work at, google has a tendency to overwhelm the untrained user.

 This received the same score, but for different reasons. I think it is really bad that the first site it lists has not been modified since 2001, and the second site is unavailable. Conceptually, I think the idea of clustering results is great. Since this is a meta-search engine, I think they need to pick higher quality search engines to search.