Net Q & A

Question of the Month: July 2000

Answer

There is no single best search engine for every project. 

I use Google most often. In a relatively short time, it has become very popular, and deservedly so. Its strength is high precision, i.e., it tends to cluster the sites most relevant to a query near the top of the list of search results. I've been experimenting with Raging Search, Google imitator begun recently by Alta Vista. 

When I need to search more comprehensively (i.e., when I need to find as many sites as possible that contain my search terms) I tend to use Fast Search or an old reliable, Alta Vista. 

If you are aware of a specialized search engine that indexes the sites that are most likely to contain your answer, that is may be the best approach. 

Findlaw's Lawcrawler indexes only legal sites. Lawrunner is a similar index that uses the AltaVista search engine. The theory behind Lawcrawler and Lawrunner is good, and some people like this search engine, but I have not gotten particularly good results with it. Lawguru.com has links to hundreds of search engines that specialize in legal topics. Their Multi Resource Legal Research page allows you to search many at the same time. Lawguru's pop up survey windows make using the site a pain, though.

Search.com has an interface to hundreds of specialized search engines. 

I don't recommend the metasearch engines like Dogpile that take your request and submit it to more than one search engine at a time. The problem in Internet research is usually not getting a lot of "hits," or sites that contain your search terms, but finding the few quality sites that contain the information you need. The best approach to this is usually using a site that has good relevancy ranking, and learning how to use the search tools available at that site.

Jerry Lawson

This page last revised: July 1, 2000.