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Reviews of Three Up-And-Coming Search Engines - PlanetSearch, Google, and GoTo.com

© Paula Dragutsky

In the split-second world of the Internet, search engines like Yahoo and Alta Vista, founded in 1994 and 1995, are considered "established" and past their youth. New search engines are continually being created, and it's safe to assume that many of them won't survive. Three that seem to have good prospects for commercial success are PlanetSearch, Google, and GoTo.com.

These three search engines were founded in 1997, and all were developed to be extremely easy to use. However, the similarities between them end there. Their goals and approaches to searchers are very different.

PlanetSearch - MAKING LIFE EASY ON THE INTERNET

Overview: PlanetSearch's (http://www.planetsearch.com) stated aim is to make life easier on the Internet. And its very simple search options and clear design go a long way toward fulfilling this goal.

Searching is fast, and results for the searches that I did were fairly comprehensive and above-average in relevance. Of course, if you want to limit your search results (e.g. to date ranges, images, countries, etc.), it's best to use a search engine with a more complex search system.

The main search page at PlanetSearch looks like a less cluttered version of the older search engines. It offers several special features, including finance, weather, and directories.

Directories: The directories feature is especially comprehensive and includes U.S. and Canadian white pages, international white pages, yellow pages, worldwide e-mail, companies online, government pages and personal web pages. The government directory gives you the names (with links) of your state and U.S. elected officials.

Hotlinks: There's a helpful subject directory of recommended web sites called Hotlinks which is much less extensive than the directories provided in the major search engines. Listings for the recommended sites include only their names with no accompanying description.

Search System: PlanetSearch gives you two search alternatives. You can simply enter your search words to retrieve results containing all or some of your search terms. Or you can precede a search word with a plus sign to require that the word appear in each result.

In addition, for each result, you can elect to have the system search for similar items.

Results: Results are presented in a format that's easy to read, and includes title, description, URL, date, and number of words. Relevance ratings are given in a color-coded bar next to each result.

You can preview each item resulting from your search without leaving PlanetSearch. The preview option shows you only the text of the item and not the graphics, though. The idea of previewing is a valuable one, but it's done better in HotBot where you're shown both text and graphics.