Search Tool Comparisons

Table 1-A: Search Tool Comparisons

Tool	Type	Size	Features	Default	Boolean	Proximity	Truncation	Case
Northern Light www.northernlight.com	Search Engine	140 million + URLS (2000)	Clustered results; categorical searches; full-text articles from 7,000+ sources	and	and, or, not, (), +, -	Phrase	Yes * %, auto plurals	No
About.com www.about.com	Directory	1 million (2001)	700 guide sites/36 channels; 50,000 subjects (selected); related searches	and	No (but + includes and – excludes)	Phrase	No	No
Alpha Search www.calvin.edu/library/ searreso/internet/as/	Directory of gateway pages (databases, full-text documents, gateways, journals)	800	allows research by resource type, discipline and subject (selected)	and	and, or, not	Phrase	No	No
Incy Wincy www.incywincy.com	Searchable database directory (“search engine for search sources”)	100,000 databases and searchable sources (claimed)	allows access to searchable sources within websites	and	and, or, andnot,	Phrase	Yes (*)	No
Metacrawler www.metacrawler.com	Meta-search Engine	millions (theoretically)	13 search engines queried	and	+, -	Phrase	No	No

Table 1-B Search Tool Comparisons (continued)

Tool	Fields	Phrase searching	Sub-searching	Thesaurus/ Controlled Vocabulary	Limits	Stop Words	Sorting	Display	Documentation
Northern Light www.northernlight.com	title,URL, text and more	Yes (use “”)	No	No	Doc type date, more	No	Relevance Custom Folders, date, clustering	10 records (b,c,e,h,i,j)	Help, PR
About.com www.about.com	No	Yes (use “”)	Yes (click on “more from site”)	No	No	No	Relevance	10 About.com/ 10 Web (a,c,e,i)	None
Alpha Search www.calvin.edu/library/ searreso/internet/as/	Discriptor (browse), discipline (browse), title words, keywords	Yes	Yes (within selected categories)	Descriptors, disciplines	Titles, keywords, descriptors	No	Relevance	All (f,l)	Help, FAQ
Incy Wincy www.incywincy.com	No	Yes	Yes (by subject)	No	No	No	Alpha	All (f)	Help
Metacrawler www.metacrawler.com	No	Yes	No	No	No	No	Relevance, site, source	20 (10 per source) (b,e,i,m,n)	Help, PR