Learn
about the two main Internet browsers,
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Netscape Navigator
|
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.htm
Internet Explorer is an excellent browser for the all versions of
the Windows platform, and is also available for Macintosh. Microsoft
now has several different versions of Internet Explorer-all free.
Keep in mind that the different versions are specific to each platform,
and each has its own features. |
|
|
Netscape Navigator
http://home.netscape.com/computing/download/index.html
Netscape Navigator is a well known browser that does a great job of
integrating audio, video, 3-D, and animation. A reason for Navigator's
popularity is its ability to successfully develop its browser across
all platforms. |
|
|
Top
of Page Browser
|
| Search
Engine |
Browsers
Search
Engines |
Search
Engines
AltaVista
Excite
HotBot
Infoseek
Lycos
WebCrawler
Yahoo!
Google
|
Meta-Crawlers
Meta-searchers search many
indexes at once.
MetaCrawler
Search,com
|
Learn
about several of the Internet Search Engines,
Yahoo
Google
Excite
WebCrawler
Lycos
|
AltaVista
http://www.altavista.com/
|
Provided
by: Digital Equipment Corporation
Browsable index: No
Search capabilities: Yes
Features: Size of the index, speed of retrieval
Help and FAQ: No, for the product.
Yes, for simple, and advanced
search. |
AltaVista indexes millions of Web pages as well as the text on those
pages. It also provides access to thousands of Usenet newsgroups.
Boolean AND/OR/NOT searching is supported, as well as phrase, proximity,
truncation, and field searching. AltaVista provides feedback in order
of relevance, but does not provide relevance scores. It has two detailed
FAQs for searching that are essential to exploit the power of the
system. It also offers LiveTopics, which, from a retrieved search
page, provides the user grouped tables of related terms for adding
to or deleting from the search.
|
|
| |
Excite
http://www.excite.com/
|
Provided
by: Excite, Inc.
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: Yes
Notable feature: Size of index, concept based searching
Help and FAQ:
Yes, for the product and the searching system |
Excite indexes millions of Web pages and Usenet news articles. Its
Intelligent Concept Extraction (ICE) search engine is based on concept
searching, but also supports Boolean AND/OR/NOT, and phrase searching.
Users may search by "concept" or key words. Concept based searching
is easier and can yield larger retrieval, but can be confusing in
that it sometimes returns sites that are not related to the query.
Excite offers relevance feedback, returning different colored icons
based on the level of relevance, and provides percentage confidence
ratings. It allows the user to click on the relevance icon next to
an item, to return similar items (query by example). It also offers
the user the option of retrieval by site, with sites listed hierarchically.
Users should read the searching FAQs carefully to use the system to
its fullest advantage. Excite also contains a browsable subject index
in 14 major categories. |
Top Search
|
|
|
HotBot
http://hotbot.lycos.com/ |
Provided
by: Inktomi and the HotWired Network
Browsable index: No
Search capabilities: Yes
Notable features: Size of the index, speed of retrieval
Help and FAQ: Yes, for
the product and the searching system |
HotBot indexes millions of documents on the web and Usenet news. Through
a forms based interface, it allows Boolean AND/OR/NOT and phrase searching.
In "open all" mode, it also supports field searching. Items are returned
in order of relevance, which is provided on a percentage basis. |
|
|
|
Infoseek Ultraseek
http://www.go.com/ |
Provided
by: Infoseek Corporation
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: Yes
Notable feature: Size of index, speed of retrieval
Help and FAQ:
Yes for the product.
Yes, for the searching system. |
Ultraseek indexes the index full text of millions of pages. It supports
Boolean AND/OR/NOT and phrase searching, as well as field searching
in 4 categories (link, site, url, and title). Items are returned in
order of relevance, which is provided on a percentage basis. Infoseek
also contains a browsable subject index in 13 major categories. |
|
|
|
Lycos
http://www.lycos.com/ |
Provided
by: Lycos, Inc.
Browsable index: Yes.
Search capabilities: Yes
Notable feature: Size of index
Help and FAQ:
Yes, for the product and the searching system |
Originally provided by Carnegie-Mellon University, this site is now
maintained by Lycos, Inc. It supports Boolean AND/OR/NOT and truncation
searching, relevance feedback, and allows the user to control the
level and amount of feedback, as well as the level of relevance. It
brings back annotation about the site from the page itself. Lycos
also maintains two browsable subject indexes, the
a2z Guide, and the well known Point Top 5% of all web sites directory.
|
|
|
|
Webcrawler
http://www.webcrawler.com/ |
Provided
by: Excite, Inc.
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: Yes
Notable feature: Quick and easy page locations
FAQ: Yes,
for the product and the searching system
|
Originally provided by the University of Washington, then by America
Online, this site is now maintained by Excite, Inc. It allows phrase,
Boolean AND/OR/NOT, and proximity searching. Relevance feedback is
available (if you select "Show Summaries"), as is a short summary
taken from the page itself. It is a good basic searcher for a "quick
and dirty" search. Webcrawler also contains a browsable subject index
in 18 major categories. |
|
|
|
Yahoo
http://www.yahoo.com/
Yahoo!
Search Features
|
Provided
by: Yahoo, Inc.
Browsable index: Yes
Search capabilities: Yes
Help and FAQ:Yes,
for the product.Yes,
for the searching system.
|
Originally written by 2 graduate students at Stanford, Yahoo is now
provided by Yahoo, Inc. The service consists of a subject catalog
divided into 14 top level categories and hundreds of sub-categories.
Yahoo alerts users to how many links are under each category and if
any new ones have been added recently. Short annotations are provided.
Yahoo is very large and well known, and is the first place many people
go for a subject catalog. A tip for using Yahoo: Because there are
hundreds of categories, finding a specific topic may present a problem
if you don't know where your topic has been filed. Therefore it may
prove useful to first do a cursory search to find where your subject
is, and then go to the category and browse it. |
|
|
|
google.com
http://www.google.com |
Provided
by: Google Inc.
Browsable index: Google was founded in 1998 by Larry Page and
Sergey Brin, two Stanford Ph.D. candidates, who developed a technologically
advanced method for finding information on the Internet.
Search capabilities: Yes
Notable features: PageRank™ technology and hypertext-matching
analysis developed by Larry Page and Sergey Brin.
Help and FAQ:
Yes, for
the product.
Yes, for
the searching system.
Many help topics are covered. |
Introduction Google runs on a unique combination of advanced hardware
and software. The speed you experience can be attributed in part to
the efficiency of our search algorithm and partly to the thousands
of low cost PC's we've networked together to create a superfast search
engine. The heart of our software is PageRank™, a system for ranking
web pages developed by our founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin at
Stanford University. And while we have dozens of engineers working
to improve every aspect of Google on a daily basis, PageRank continues
to provide the basis for all of our web search tools.
PageRank Explained - PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature
of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an
individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from
page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks
at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives;
it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages
that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make
other pages "important." Important, high-quality sites receive a higher
PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of
course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your
query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching
techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your
search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears
on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the
content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match
for your query. |
|
|
|
MetaCrawler
http://www.metacrawler.com/ |
Provided
by: go2net, Inc.
Browsable index: No
Search capabilities: Yes
Notable features:Searches multiple indexes simultaneously
Help and FAQ:
Yes, for the product and the searching system. |
With a single search request MetaCrawler searches six search engines:
AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, Lycos, Webcrawler, and Yahoo. It supports
Boolean AND/OR and phrase searching. MetaCrawler collects confidence
scores from each of the search engines used, combines them, and provides
the search results in order of relevance based on the combined confidence
score. It does not, however, return individual confidence scores.
MetaCrawler allows the user to focus the search by geographic region
and by selected Internet domain type, e.g. "com," "edu," and "gov."
It also allows the user to specify search time spent and number of
results per source returned. |
|
|
|
search.com
http://www.search.com |
Provided
by: c|net, inc.
Browsable index: Yes, of searching engines
Search capabilities: Yes
Notable features: The number of search engines available. User
can customize a page of favorite search engines. Brief annotations
and searching tips for each search engine are provided.
Help and FAQ:Yes,
for the product. Yes,
for the searching system. A Boolean searching primer is also provided.
|
Search.com provides the user with direct access to hundreds of search
engines. The engines are organized into over 25 subject categories,
allowing the user to narrow a search by selecting engines specializing
in general topics such as art, science, health, news, sports, or entertainment.
Each engine is accompanied by a short annotation, as well as one or
two searching tips for that engine. The best engines, as determined
by search.com, are indicated by a "top pick" icon. The search.com
service allows the user to create a personalized page of useful engines
that will appear for that user each time search.com initializes. Each
subject heirarchy can be searched across selected search engines.
The number of engines available, as well as the organization of the
site, make it a valuable addition as an Internet searching tool. |
| |
Copyright Internet
Scout Project, 1994-1998. http://scout.cs.wisc.edu/
|
|
| |
|
