Reviews of Three Up-And-Coming Search Engines - PlanetSearch, Google, and GoTo.com - Page 2
© Paula Dragutsky
Overview: Despite a name that sounds like a baby babbling, Google (http://google.stanford.edu) is all business. (The name Google is actually derived from the mathematical term googol meaning 10^100. Please don't ask me to explain.)
It was created at Stanford University where it's still considered "research in progress." Its goal is to improve the relevancy of results returned by search engines.
Only One Search Operator: Google employs only one search operator and no search menus, yet often proves adept at coming up with the type of results I was looking for. However, it's not the best choice for doing highly specialized searches.
Google is still a relatively small search engine (25 million web pages indexed as compared with Alta Vista's 110 million), but it usually returned a greater number of results than its size would suggest.
Search System: For most searches, simply enter your search words or phrase in the search box. If you type in more than one word, Google searches for the phrase first, and then the individual words.
The system automatically assumes that you require each item to include all your search terms. Google searches only for the form of the word you enter. (It won't automatically search for plurals, past tense, etc.)
You can force Google to search for common words which it would usually ignore (e.g. with, the) by putting the plus sign in front of them. This is especially useful in searching for phrases (e.g. Gone +With +The Wind).
Linked Web Pages: For each result, you're given the option of retrieving all the web pages that link to it.
Results: Results include title, URL, when the item was cached (indexed) by Google, and whether or not there's a phrase match. Also included are page rank (related to websites that link to the item) and relevance ratings.
Google gives you the opportunity to go straight to your first result without even seeing the whole list by selecting the I'm feeling lucky button near the search box.
GoTo.com - A REVOLUTIONARY CONSUMER SEARCH ENGINE
Overview: GoTo.com (http://www.goto.com) is revolutionary in the search engine business, not because of its search algorithm, but because of the way web sites get listed in it. Web site owners are required to pay to have their site listed in GoTo.com.
Bidding On Search Words: In addition, site owners bid on search words that are relevant to their site in order to be listed toward the beginning search results. Since most people don't look past the first page or two of results, an early placement is especially important to companies trying to sell something on the Web.
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