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AltaVista
Too
many owners in too few years have left
AltaVista struggling for an identity.
We all know that it's one of the Web's
premier search engines, but what else
should it be? Its latest look, unveiled
this fall, sends it in the direction of
portals. It's more like Yahoo! than ever
and includes a customizable home page
for the first time (featuring audio and
video), along with more direct links to
Shopping.com (which the site owns), discussions,
and even the promise of free Internet
access via AV's ad-supported MicroPortal
toolbar. The site will still belch forth
thousands of results to your search queries,
but the addition of Ask Jeeves plain-English
technology lets you ask your questions
in a more natural way.
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Direct
Hit
Like
Google, Direct Hit, which is integrated
into such sites as HotBot, LookSmart,
and Lycos, is a relevance engine that
analyzes the activities of millions of
previous Internet searchers to determine
the most relevant sites for your search
request. Even though you may never actually
visit this site, you'll notice its technology
powering your searches at an increasing
number of other sites.
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Google
Google
started out as a Stanford University project
designed to find the most relevant Web
pages (those with the most inbound links)
and run searches against them. Since February
1999 it's been a commercial venture, and
it's destined to succeed, given its uncanny
knack for returning extremely relevant
results. Try it just once, and you'll
see how different the search results are
from those you get at other search engines.
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HotBot
HotBot
is part of The Lycos Network and performs
fast, accurate searches that deliver relevance-ranked
results. Search within date ranges, and
do a second search off the results of
your first search. The results: better
search returns. HotBot remains the versatility
leader among search engines.
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Northern
Light
Northern
Light puts your search results into folders
based on their sources. That makes it
easier for you to figure out which results
you should focus your attention on. The
site also provides access to non-Web-based
information from over 5,400 business magazines,
newswires, and academic journals that
you can't find anywhere else online. (You'll
pay to access the full text of those search
results.) According to a July 1999 survey,
Northern Light has 18 percent of the Web
indexed. That may not sound like much,
but it's more than any other search engine.
And now the site has added SearchAlert,
a free service that e-mails you when an
item in a category you've specified is
added to the Northern Light database.
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