Infoseek and Ask Jeeves: Reviews and Search Tips + Natural Language Queries

Articles in this Topic Discussions in this Topic

Feb 6, 1998

INFOSEEK - SUBJECT "CHANNELS" ADD VALUE TO ITS SEARCH ENGINE Infoseek (http://guide.infoseek.com) is particularly skilled at integrating information from its specialized subject channels with its search engine. Along with search results, you're provided with a column on the left side of the page containing links to categories of selected sites and special features that are relevant to your topic.

These suggested categories of sites are often very helpful in pinpointing information (although, at times, Infoseek's choice of related subjects is baffling. For example, if you're searching for material about investing in pork bellies, you'll be shown links to reviewed sites about commodities, futures and options trading services, and stocks, as well as links to stock quotation, charting and tracking services.

A search using the phrase human cloning displays links to selected sites about genetic cloning and technology news. A link is provided to the latest news about a topic (derived from several newswires) for every search.

Well-Organized Subject Channels

Infoseek has created 15 well-organized, comprehensive, channels covering broad subject areas (e.g. computers, business, entertainment, health, real estate). The various channel pages contain links to sites providing the most commonly desired information in a field, for example, sports statistics, restaurant reviews and job listing classifieds.

There are also links to collections of reviewed sites about many facets of a channel's field of interest. It's easy to be led into areas of a subject you hadn't planned to explore when you're using a channel.

The Business Channel is particularly well thought out. If you need information (including graphs, charts, and other statistical data) about a company, current news about an industry, or sites about management, finance, commerce or other business-related subjects, you'll find it here quickly and easily.

The Entertainment Channel, which covers everything from books to movies to photography, is also outstanding. You can readily obtain movie reviews, look at local television schedules, get information about the most popular music singles and albums, order tickets to events, etc.

Navigation and Results

Navigation in Infoseek is smooth and generally speedy. Search pages are laid out clearly and logically. Even channel pages, with their abundance of links and information, are never jarring or confusing.

Result descriptions are fairly standard. Each item's relevance rating and size are specified, but no date is included. Unless you choose ungroup results (at the top of the list of results for each search), all the results from a site will be grouped together. However, these Web pages won't be visible unless you choose more results from this site which appears below the first item from that site.

Go To Page: 1 2 3

The copyright of the article Infoseek and Ask Jeeves: Reviews and Search Tips + Natural Language Queries in Search Engines is owned by Paula Dragutsky. Permission to republish Infoseek and Ask Jeeves: Reviews and Search Tips + Natural Language Queries in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.