Feb. 15, 2001
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Extras |
Filtering Options |
Commercial Aspects |
| AltaVista |
News, stock quotes, shopping, and a variety of other options can be accessed from top menu.
Free e-mail and other Web tools.
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Uses combination of a proprietary filter and SurfWatch. Relatively sophisticated. |
Many ads, including targeted ones.
Links to matching sponsors appear near top.
Many options to shop for search items.
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| Ask Jeeves |
Unusual approach to searching is what makes this site unique. |
Ask Jeeves Kids is a separate, filtered site (to be reviewed next month). |
Banner ads, but most of the screen is devoted to the search. |
| Excite |
Main site page has a variety of options, including news, stocks, and personal tools (e.g., address book, calendar).
Member photos area has free images shared by site visitors. Can be e-mailed or used as screen savers.
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None available. |
Banner ads at top of the page.
"Quick Results" box (with links) appears on the side of the page when there is a match to content residing at Excite or partner sites, which are often commercial (Saturn cars and TV shows about ancient Egypt, for example, but no astronomy or history sites).
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| Go |
Go Express Search is a meta engine that Windows users can download and access from their browser window anytime they're online.
Translators for languages other than English.
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GOGuardian can be turned on and off. Not very effective (no sites on "sex education" allowed, but many pornographic sites made it into a search involving "girls"). |
No banner ads, but eBay and GOShopping options appear on the results screen, and Disney content appears to come up more frequently than information from other sources. |
| Google |
Maps of specified places.
Dictionary definitions of words.
"I'm Feeling Lucky" button allows you to jump straight to the first match.
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Uses combination of a proprietary filter and SurfWatch. Relatively sophisticated. |
No banner ads, but includes a link (clearly labeled as "sponsored link") to the sponsor who comes closest to matching search terms. |
| HotBot |
News, stock quotes, shopping, and a variety of other options can be accessed from top menu.
Links back to Lycos (a partner site) for additional searches on same terms.
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None available. |
Sponsored "Featured Listings" and "Search Partner" links come up whenever match warrants.
Some banner ads, but most of screen is devoted to the search.
Not clear whether commercial factors might help determine "Top 10" results.
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| Lycos |
News, stock quotes, shopping, and a variety of other options can be accessed from top menu.
Links to HotBot (another Lycos site) for additional searches on the same terms.
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SearchGuard filtering was not very flexible-it simply ignores certain search terms (e.g., "girls" resulted in no matches, "sex education" in millions of matches related only to the word "education"). |
Targeted banner ads, "featured sites" by sponsors, and links to partner sites. |
| Northern Light |
"Special Editions" news coverage has links and resources on selected topics.
GeoSearch to locate resources in a particular part of the country.
Online business library ("Special Collection") with full-text journals, books, magazines, newswires, and references. Summary is free, users can choose to order the full text article.
Several business databases with similar pay-per-use features.
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None available. |
Default search includes Special Collection articles that cost money to retrieve (can turn off using Power Search).
Relatively little advertising on home page.
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| Yahoo |
News, stock quotes, shopping, and a variety of other options can be accessed from top menu. |
None available. |
Links to Yahoo! Shopping options precede directory choices on main screen.
When Yahoo! products match search term, links to them appear at top of search results screen.
Many ads and shopping options.
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