Search Engine Comparison
LSC 548
| Name of Search Engine | ||
| What is the URL? | ||
| What is it used for? | General search on the web; "make the world's information universally accessible and useful" | Meta search technology; search a variety of engines at the same time |
| How easy or difficult is it to figure out how to search? | Fairly easy; large search box in central location; help is readily available | Fairly easy; centralized search field; search help and tips are readily available |
| How do you navigate through it? | Type in a few descriptive words; no need to use 'and' - it is done automatically; can use Boolean operators if desired | Type in terms as directly as possible; uses Boolean and proximity operators automatically, as well as checks spelling |
| How many Web sites are covered? | Unable to find a concrete number; states that it searches and yields results of up to 50% more than a regular search engine | |
| What are some searching tips? | Be detailed with your wording, drop unnecessary words, utilize "phrase" searching with quotation marks | Choose terms carefully, place them in the specific order that you want them to appear, pay close attention to spacing |
| Can you change the default search logic? | No; automatically uses Boolean and stemming | Yes; can toggle Boolean operators on and off |
| Can you change the way in which results are displayed? | In a limited manner - language, how many appear on each page, by most current date, file format, or specific domain; can not really change the visual layout of the results unless you look at the cached version of each individual website displayed | Also in limited ways - by date or domain, language, etc. Biggest way one can change the display is by selecting to have the results displayed by relevance versus by search engine |
| How many results did you receive? | Searched for 'temperature on the sun;' received approximately 2,510,000 hits, of which about 850 displayed (Google automatically hid similar sites to reduced the amount displayed) | Searched for 'temperature on the sun;' received 87 hits |
| How current are the results? | Ranged anywhere from earlier this week to several years ago; many sites were from 2000 | Dates included in results range from January 1, 1990 (no earlier) through the current date |
| What proportion of the results were relevant? | An estimated 75% were exact in their relevance, while another 5-10% were slightly off; the last 15-20% was completely irrelevant | Very good results - 90% of the sites found were completely relevant |
| Was the amount of detail displayed with the results adequate? | Yes - utilized an actual "snippet" of text from the site with key words bolded which allowed for determination of relevancy | Yes - good summary directly from website; bolded key terms; able to determine if site is relevant from this excerpt |
| Was the order in which the results were displayed evident and/or logical? | It is evident that they used proximity and number of times the key words appeared in the site (they refer to this as 'PageRank' priorities); otherwise, some sites with prominent advertising sites took precedence over more relevant sites | Logical layout based on relevance using proximity operators and automatic categorization |
| What are the strengths/weaknesses? | Strengths - Fast (indicates how quickly results are found, most within .25 seconds), allows for the viewing of similar pages, very straightforward search box; Weaknesses - Yields many results from sites that pay for placement in search results, it often takes several tries to narrow in on a specific topic (otherwise, you end up with over a million hits) | Strengths - New toolbar feature to assist in searching, allows you to search several search engines at once plus indicates which engines are being used via an attribution bar, quick and relevant results, automatic spelling check on search words; Weaknesses - 'Autocategorization'/'Refine your results' feature is not well explained so it is perhaps underutilized, some distractions on the search page (joke of the day, Arfie's costumes...), not much information is offered about Dogpile itself (however one can find ample information on Arfie the mascot) |
| How often is it updated? | The directory index is automatically updated about once a month by robots | Could not find the frequency of updates, just that they are done by spiders as well as having a manually updated open directory |
| What is the e-mail address to submit questions? | Google has several departments that you can select from to contact based on what your specific question is; for general search related questions, e-mail: help@google.com | Direct all inquiries to: information@dogpile.com |
| On a scale of 1 to 10 (1=poor, 10=superior), rate each search engine. | ||
| Briefly describe why you rated each as you did. | Google allows one to easily search a great portion of the web, finding many results. However, sometimes there are too many results or they are posted based on how much money the site is spending to have a good result placement. It is still a good search engine that is fairly easy to use and frequented by a large portion of the computer-using population, but it could be better. For these reasons, I gave Google a 7. | Dogpile yields highly relevant results. It can also save you time, since it searches several search engines at once. You do have to be more aware of the phrasing/spacing you use in your searching, however, than you do with other engines. Based on the results, ease of use, and knowing that they can still improve on some aspects that fuel their searches, I gave Dogpile an 8. |