Service
How We Tested | Type of service | Product information | Business information | Technology information | Regional information | Hard-to-find information | Overall relevance score | Advanced search features | Ease of use | Dead links | Currency | Comments |
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AltaVista
www.altavista.com | Engine | Excellent | Poor | Fair | Excellent | Poor | Fair | Good | Fair | Fair | Poor | This service performed the worst of the pure search engines. It often pointed to home pages rather than to pages that provided the answer we were looking for. Its advanced searches require knowledge of Boolean, but its "sort by" feature greatly improves relevance.  |
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Ask Jeeves
www.ask.com | Directory | Excellent | Poor | Poor | Good | Poor | Poor | n/a | Fair | Good | Poor | This natural-language site returned too many home page links and not enough direct links to the information. It has no advanced search features.  |
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Dogpile
www.dogpile.com | Metasearch | Good | Excellent | Excellent | Good | Poor | Good | Good | Fair | Good | Poor | Unlike other metasearch engines, Dogpile divides results by the sites it gathered them from, which makes them less useful.  |
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Excite
www.excite.com | Directory | Good | Poor | Excellent | Excellent | Poor | Fair | Good | Fair | Good | Poor | You must perform a basic search to get access to the service's advanced features. Our hard-to-find search turned up dozens of adult-site links. |
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Fast
www.alltheweb.com | Engine | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Poor | Good | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | A close runner-up to Google, this engine excelled in all categories except our hard-to-find topic. It produced the best percentage of correct answers with the first result, and it returned very few dead links. Its interface is simple and functional.  |
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Best Bet Google
www.google.com | Engine | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Good | Excellent | Still the champ, Google produced relevant returns in every category. Its easy-to-use interface fills out the experience.  |
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HotBot
www.hotbot.com | Metasearch | Fair | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Poor | Good | Excellent | Fair | Good | Poor | This was the best metasearch site for our business, products, and technology searches, but its results were not as relevant as those of the pure search engines. |
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LookSmart
www.looksmart.com | Directory | Poor | Poor | Excellent | Poor | Poor | Poor | n/a | Fair | Good | Poor | After recently switching to a pay-for-placement model, this site tanked on most of the tests. It works much better as a directory than as a pure search engine. Its human-compiled descriptions are useful, but it has no advanced search features. |
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Lycos
www.lycos.com | Directory | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Poor | Good | Excellent | Fair | Excellent | Excellent | Our highest-rated directory benefits from using Fast as its search engine. This service gets the edge over Yahoo because of its better interface and advanced search features.  |
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MetaCrawler
www.metacrawler.com | Metasearch | Poor | Poor | Poor | Poor | Poor | Poor | Fair | Good | Excellent | Poor | This metasearch site struggled with our search terms. It works better when searching for general information. |
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Northern Light
www.northernlight.com | Engine | Excellent | Poor | Excellent | Excellent | Poor | Good | Good | Fair | Good | Good | Known as a researcher's favorite, Northern Light did much better in the tests when we used its advanced features. It divides results into handy subcategory folders, but it also includes links to reports and articles that it charges you to access.  |
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Yahoo
www.yahoo.com | Directory | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Excellent | Good | Excellent | Excellent | Fair | Good | Excellent | Yahoo benefits from using Google as its search engine, but its portal features distract you from getting the information you want quickly. |
