Continued from page 1
AltaVista
• Initially loading
search page for AltaVista is fast. • Search time was not posted but was a sliver slower than Google. • The search yielded 736,000 results. • The sponsored results take up almost entire screen. You have to scroll to get to good stuff. • The results are all relevant, though one redirects you to DMOZ, where a second search for your keywords is performed. • Spellcheck was available.
Lycos
• Initially loading search page for Lycos is fast. • Search time was not posted but was rather slow. • The search yielded 114,356 results. • The sponsored results take up almost entire screen. Once again, you have to scroll to get to good stuff. • All results are relevant although 2 of them redirect you to DMOZ.org. • Spellcheck was available.
Excite
• Initially loading search page for Excite is slow. • Search time was not posted but was rather slow. • The search yielded 114,356 results. • All results on first page were relevant. • The look of site was clean. • Spellcheck was available.
HotBot
• Initially loading search page for HotBot is fast. • Search time was not posted but was fast. • The search yielded 114,389 results. • The sponsored results take up almost entire screen. Once again, you have to scroll to get to good stuff. • All results are relevant although 1 of them redirects you to DMOZ.org. • Spellcheck was available.
AllTheWeb
• Initially loading search page for AllTheWeb is fast. • Search time was not posted, but was fast. • The search yielded 679,000 results. • It is difficult to tell sponsored results from web results. • An offensive content filter was available. • All results are relevant although 1 of them redirects you to DMOZ.org. • Spellcheck was not available.
Looksmart
• Initially loading search page for Looksmart is fast. • Search time was not posted but was rather slow. • The search yielded 300 results. • There were 3 completely irrelevant results on first page. • The look of site was clean. • Spellcheck was not available.
Jayde
• Initially loading search page for Jayde is somewhat slow. • Search time was not posted but was average. • The search yielded 60,424 results. • There were quite a few irrelevant results. • The look of site was clean. • Spellcheck was not available.
So, what's conclusion? My favorite search engine is best. All hail Google! ... Alright, alright, some of others are pretty cool, too.
Courtney Heard is the founder of Abalone Designs, an Internet Marketing and SEO company in Vancouver, Canada. She has been involved in web development and marketing since 1995 and has helped start several businesses since then in the Vancouver area. More of Courtney's articles are available at www.abalone.ca/resources/
