Evaluating Web Search Tools

Library 202
April 10, 2001

Search team

Jan Keiser

Jennifer Neys

Joselle Martin-Dennis

Geoffrey Skinner

Search Tools Investigated

About.com (Directory)

AlphaSearch (Directory of gateway pages)

IncyWincy (Searchable database directory - "Invisible Web")

MetaCrawler (Meta search engine)

Northern Light (Search engine)

Summary

The team investigated five different types of search tools, using real-world searches. Each member tested the strengths and weaknesses of the tools with a different search topic; we found that different tools worked better than others for some topics, for a variety of reasons. Overall, we concluded that closed questions or fact checking will be more successful using a search engine. We also noted that in conducting subject searches, or any time the user is ignorant of the subject, using a directory will provide more satisfactory results.

Documents

Power Point presentation

Search Tool Review

Feature comparisons

Sample Searches (Jennifer)

Sample Searches (Geoffrey)

Primary References

Search Engine Showdown (http://www.searchengineshowdown.com)

Finding Information on the Internet: a tutorial (rev. fall 2000). University of California, Berkeley (http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/FindInfo.html)

Northern Light (2000?) . Sagle, Idaho: Northern Webs. Retrieved Mar. 26, 2001, from the World Wide Web: http://www.northernwebs.com/set/northern_lights.html