Search Engine Reviews: Direct Hit and Open Directory Project
Search System: Search operators are not used in Direct Hit and there are no search menus. This means there is no way to search for phrases, or to exclude or require words. Just type in the words you're searching for.
Not Right For Every Search: The inability to specify how your keywords should be searched for can present a problem. Assume, for instance, that you were searching for information about John J. Crittenden (cabinet member under US Presidents Harrison, Tyler and Fillmore).
There happen to be several John Crittendens who were prominent people. Entering John J Crittenden would not limit your results to that word order, and you would actually retrieve more irrelevant results in Direct Hit than you would in other search engines. (Compare with Alta Vista or FAST using quotation marks to require exact word order.)
Searching for a specific aspect of a subject is often unsuccessful in Direct Hit. For example, keying in Abraham Lincoln will give you a list of very pertinent results. However if you want to find information about Lincoln's childhood and enter Abraham Lincoln childhood in Direct Hit, your results would be worse than those you'd get by entering +"Abraham Lincoln" +childhood in most of the large search engines.
Results: Each result includes the title, description and url. Some of the items are rated. Useful suggestions for additional searches about the subject are displayed.
A section devoted to shopping on the web is promised by the end of the month.
OPEN DIRECTORY PROJECT - A GIANT DIRECTORY
Open Directory Project is truly an enormous directory, with 1,038,220 sites, 17,048 (unpaid) editors and 162,989 categories. The editors volunteer their services to select and maintain the best sites about a narrow subject area that interests them.
A directory is as good as its editors, and these volunteers seem to be taking their jobs seriously. The selections of sites in the categories I looked at appear to be high-quality, relevant and well-rounded. Of course, I can't speak for all the topics.
The number of categories and subcategories per topic area is truly mind-boggling. For example, in the Baseball category, there are 19 subcategories, including Major League. The Major League section is divided into 10 subcategories, including Players. And in the Players category, there are 454 subcategories for the individual players!
Search Tips: Several search operators are available in Open Directory Project, but the only ones that I've found useful are quotation marks
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