A Sample Topic
I did a sample search on the three search engines that I spoke of
earlier. I first went to Yahoo to do a search on "cyberspace". I typed
in "cyberspace" in the box and clicked on the search button to start my
search. After a couple of seconds, a list under Yahoo Categories
appeared. This list consists of topics that were alphebeically listed.
The category section lists all the subsections after the category name
that you would have to go through in order to find the topic.
Under the Yahoo Categories,
there was Yahoo Sites. Under
yahoo Sites, the topics were agian displayed, but this time, with a
description of the web site. Again, this is displayed along with the
Yahoo category that it falls under. It is still alphebetized.
Next, I went to Lycos to do the same search. In the box, I again typed
in "cyberspace", but this time the button I clicked on was labeled "go
get it." After a couple of seconds, I was informed that 6001 relevant
documents were found, but only the toop ten in relevance was sited right
then and there. Each document title was a link to that page. The title
was follwed by a brief description and then the direct address for that
page. At the very end, in brackets, the percentage of relevance of the
docement to my topic was listed. Also available in Lycos was four other
ways to look for more results. They were numbered from one to four: 1.
All Sites, 2. Related Sites, 3. Pictures, and 4. Sounds.
I then went to Magellan for the same search. Magellan seemed to me to be
a little bit more detailed. I clicked on net search which brought me to
the Magellan page, which also had links to the other engines such as
Yahoo and Lycos. I typed in "cyberspace" in the box and proceed to click
on the "search: button. At this, I was taken to a page which had a list
of other related topics first. I was then told that 23444 relevant
sources were found and ranked by relevancy. The top ten in relevancy was
listed. The titles of each document was listed followed by a short
review of each which ended with the address to the site. Also present on
this Magellan page which was not present on Yahoo or Lycos was two
symbols, a star and a small green button. Each document had either
star(s) or a
green button and some even had both. I was curious, so I
clicked on each for more info. The
star(s) were ratings of
each site, just
like the movies. Four stars meant it was really informative as well as
deep and entertaining. No stars..well, you probably guessed the meaning
of that! The
green button next to each documented indicates that this site, at
the time of review, was not intended for mature audiences.