It's true that both NBC and CBS shamelessly promote themselves on their engines, but this doesn't bother me at all. What does concern me is the trend occurring in (especially new) search engines and even some directories to charge for website listings without making this clear or separating the sponsored sites from others on the list.
Eventually, in search engines that practice this, the website listings that searchers retrieve will be ranked by the budget of the sites' instead of their relevance or value.
SeekAmerica is a new metasearch engine claiming to have a revolutionary search algorithm, which increases the relevance of searches. More interesting is the access it provides to metasearches of websites originating in a variety of countries.
NBCi - A WORTHY SEARCH ENGINE COMBINED WITH OFFERINGS FROM NBC
NBCi is a search engine/web portal combining Snap (the former search engine), XOOM.com (a membership site offering chat rooms, movies, software downloads and other services) and information and entertainment content from the many properties of NBC.
Although the design emphasizes NBC's various entertainment and information offerings, the search engine (which incorporates searches of NBCi's directory) is serious. It's powered by Inktomi, but seems to have more useful features than some of the other search engines that use Inktomi's system.
Search Tips
In NBCi's regular (or Simple) search mode, you can use quotation marks to enclose a phrase and the plus and minus signs to require or exclude words.
The menu-based Power Search mode gives you many more options. For example, you can search for words in the title, use Boolean operators, and limit the results by date, media type, domain, country and language.
NBCi has several nice search features, which appear after you get your list of results. For instance, a very comprehensive and useful list of suggested keywords and phrases are linked directly to search results should you click on any of these words.
Near the top of your screen you'll notice five options - Web Sites, Pictures, Audio Sites, Video Sites, Music & MP3. Choosing one of these options will initiate a search - using your former search words - for whatever category of sites you select. For example, if you search using the keyword goblins, get a list of results, and then select Pictures, you'll get a second list of websites containing pictures of goblins.
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