Search Engine Comparison

LSC 548

Name of Search Engine	TEOMA	Google
What is the URL?	http://www.teoma.com	http://www.google.com
What is it used for?	This is a general search site which gives you three different sets of responses. It shows you web sites relevant to your query in the results section. It also lists suggestions on how to refine your search to get more specific results. Finally it gives you a separate section of resources, which are sort of like mini virutal libraries on your topic. They are usually web pages that are collections of links compiled by experts in the subject area.	Google is arguably the most popular general search engine. They also have separate engines for searching images, news, groups, directories, shopping sites and more. They seem to always be developing new services and improving their current ones.
How easy or difficult is it to figure out how to search?	The main search page looks similar to Google and other search engines. It is a mainly empty page with one block in the center where you enter your search terms. There is a link that allows you to go directly to advanced search, as well as one which allows you to change the search preferences. One the right hand side of the page it lists "Results, Refine, Resources" to let you know that you will get three sections of answers to your query. Each is marked by a different color -- blue, orange and green. The main page is easy to figure out.	It is very easy to figure out how to search. The main page has one block for entering your search terms, and then you can choose if you want to search within the web, images, news, etc. by clicking on the link above the bar. They also offer an advanced search page and have a link to that on the main page. Using the "I'm feeling lucky" button will give you only the first result, while using the Google search button gives you a ranked listing of all results.
How do you navigate through it?	After entering your search terms on the main page, you get a screen which lists your Results on the left hand side, suggestions to Refine on the top right part of the screen, and links to Resource sites on the bottom left part of the screen. Often there is also one or two sponsored links at the very top left. These are sites who pay for a prominent position in the Results section.Clicking on any of the Results will bring you to an outside webpage. Clicking on one of the Refine or Resource suggestions brings you to a new Teoma page, where the Refine term has been entered as the main search term, and you have the new set of Results, a new set of Refine suggestions and a new set of Resources.	Once you enter your search terms on the main page, you are presented a list of results on the left side of the page and a list of sponsored links on the right hand side of the page. Clicking on the link will open the web site in the same window and you have to use the back button to return to the results list. It also gives you the option of viewing a cached version of the site. This is useful for sites that have been taken down, or where the links have expired. It will also give you the option of viewing PDF sites as PDF or as HTML incase you don't have a PDF reader. You also have the option of viewing similar pages to each result returned. You can refine your results by searching within the results.
How many Web sites are covered?	According to their "How Teoma Works" section, it currently crawls more than one billion web sites and indexes more than 500 million URLs.	Google searches 4,285,199,774 web pages, and this number changes as they frequently update the number of pages searched.
What are some searching tips?	There is a search tips page which gives a number of suggestions and also explains in more detail the difference between the Results, Refinements and Resources. They suggest using quotations to specify phrases, using + or - to include or avoid certain words, using specific terms and words, checking your spelling and trying all endings of your term(s).	Google also has a whole page of search tips and FAQs. They give an outline of the basics of boolean searching, tips on how to customize your results and how to use the advanced search feature.
Can you change the default search logic?	There is an advanced search page which allows you to set different parameters. .	You can search in different sections of google -- news, images, froogle, etc.
Can you change the way in which results are displayed?	Yes, there is a preferences page. However you can only change howmany Results are shown per page (10, 20, 30, 50 or 100) and whether or not clicking on a Result opens a new window or not. There should be more options to allow for more or fewer Refinements and Resources.	Yes, there is a preferences page.You can change the language of sites searched, add filters to prevent certain sites from appearing in the results, change the number of results per page, and whether to open results in a new window.
How many results did you receive?	A search for America's Cup led to 1,666,000 Results, 6 suggestions on how to Refine my search with a link to show "all refinements (14), and 10 Resource links.	A search for America's Cup returned 932,000 site in .13 seconds.
How current are the results?	The top Results from the search I tried for America's Cup did not seem to all be current. The first site was for the upcoming race, but there were several that mentioned the "latest news on the 2003 race" and one was news from 1999-2000. A search for Bill Clinton mentioned nothing in the Results, Resources or Refinements about his soon to be released book, but there were a lot of hits discussing his presidency and impeachment trial. The sponsored link at the very top was for the book.	The results are very current. The first page of hits for America's Cup were mostly about the next race which is only in the planning stages now and will be held in 2007. A search for Bill Clinton lists today's top news stories about him first on the page. And tells you down to the hour when they were last updated.
What proportion of the results were relevant?	While the results weren't always current, they first few pages of Results were mostly relevant to the searches I tried. The Refine suggestions were all good suggestions, and the Resource pages seemed like they would all be helpful .	Usually I find the first two to three pages of results from Google to be relevant, depending on the number of results returned. When I do specific searched using quotations and particular phrases, I usually get very good results.
Was the amount of detail displayed with the results adequate?	The Results section looks much like Google's results, with the title of the webpage, the first few lines of text with the search terms in bold, and then the website URL address show. It will also show "more results from..." if there are several hits from different pages of the same main source. There is no description or text given for the Resource hits, just the URL address. There should be more information given in this section.	I think the amount of detail displayed is relevant. In addition to giving you some of the context of where on the page your search terms appear, for a lot of websites, Google will also tell you the last time the particular site was updated.
Was the order in which the results were displayed evident and/or logical?	The Results first listed seemed to be ones which had my search terms in the title of the page. Next, it listed the ones with the terms in the text of the website, with the pages with the most number of hits in them listed before ones with fewer mentions.	Like Teoma, the results seem to first be ones with the search term in the title, followed by one with the term appearing many times in the text. The difference with Google is that if you search something that is in the news that day, it will first list links to the top news stories.
What are the strengths/weaknesses?	I think that the suggestions for Refining your search, as well as the separation of the links to Resource pages makes this search engine uinque. They are definite strengths. It doesn't seem to be as current as some other engines, which is a weakness.	Google's popularity is both a strength and a weakness. Because most people know about it, a lot of web sites link to it and try to manipulate their content so that they will get a higher relevance ranking. While this may give more possible results, they are not always relevant. Occasionally you will get a high number of sponosored links, who pay a fee, that are not as relevant as some other sites. Also, hackers will sometimes "google bomb" a particular site, to make it the first result for a given phrase.
How often is it updated?	I could not find information on their site about how frequently they update.	Google continuously montiors news services and websites to bring the most current news stories. I believe they are also continuously crawling the web and adding new sites to their
What is the e-mail address to submit questions?	ask@teoma.com	There is a whole page of contact information with different email addresses for different types of questions and concerns. For the search engine, they have help@google.com, suggestions@google.com, comments@google,com, search-quality@google.com and webmaster@google.com.
On a scale of 1 to 10 (1=poor, 10=superior), rate each search engine.	I give this site an 8. I think it is an interesting concept to divide the results from a basic search in this way. But it didn't seem to be as current as some other search engines.	Google gets a 10 from me. I use it all the time and they have a lot of useful features with usually relevant results. It is current and updated frequently, and they are always obviously trying to improve their services.

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