Search Engines Blog

I chose WolframAlpha, Bing, Gigablast, Soso.com, Yahoo, Youdao, DuckDuckGo, and Baidu as my eight search engines. I will explain what each search engine is used for, how they work, and give an evaluation of them. There will aslo be a like to look at the search engines yourself.

First on my list is WolframAlpha. This site is useful for looking up historical data, probabilities and poker hands, nutritional information, color facts, and words and wildcards. This is mostly numerical data. It works by a computational knowledge engine. It does not scan the web for material, but relies on a database controlled by the employees of the company. I like this site. I wish I would have known about it when I took Statistics 210.

Click here for WolframAlpha!

Second, I chose Bing. It is most useful for shopping, travel, local information, and health. It works by a programming code, also known as an algorithm. It narrows down and filters the results. From my experience out of the search engines I have used, this was my least favorite. I did not like the way information came up after the search was completed.

Click here for Bing!

Next, I researched Gigablast. It provides large-scale information, high performance, real-time information, and has retrieval technology from partner sites. It works by an index. It generates sites with related concepts from your qwerty entry. I don't see myself using this site because it seems so much like Google, which is my favorite.

Click here for Gigablast!

Soso.com was the next site I chose. It is useful for instant messaging, online media, video games, value-added service, and e-commerce. I see this site being a way to be social. It works as a browser hijacker, meaning it promotes other free downloads and changes the homepage on your computer. This site also looked a lot like Google, even down to the color of the word "soso.com".

Click here for Soso.com!

Yahoo was the fifth search engine I chose to look into. I find this site very useful about anything and everything. It has possibilities for e-mail, communication, and even to advertising. It works by providing a listing to users from a variety of sources. This is one of my favorite sites, because I've always used it. I am familiar with how it works.

Click here for Yahoo!

Next, I researched Youdao. It was useful in finding webpages, images, news, music, blogs, dictionary entries, and more. It concentrates mostly on dictionary entries. It works by using a spider and an index. My evaluation for this site was hard. If I could read Chinese it would have been a lot easier to evaluate. Overall, it looked like Google, because of the categories at the top of the page.

Click here for Youdao!

Seventh was DuckDuckGo. This site gets the best resources, rather than all resources. It works by a driven community, servers, and algorithms. It has more privacy, a smarter search, and less clutter. I like this site and could see myself using it in the future. It is so simple.

Click here for DuckDuckGo!

Last, I looked a Baidu. It is a language search engine. It also looks up audio files and images. It works from an index of over 740 million pages, 80 million images, and 10 million multimedia files. This was once again a site that would have been easier to read if it was in English. It looked a lot like Yahoo, as far as it was set up.

Click here for Baidu!