­...-. .......w_•__~~Ja._.........~­.~~,...

.t-.CI& ...

Devel oped by D igital Co r p , thi s is o ne of th e largest and m ost

compre hens ive engi nes, ind exin g ove r 250 million web pages . It is a

fu ll- te xt ind ex that sea rc hes th e ent ire web page file . It is a \'ery good

site fo r begin ners bein g ve ry use r -fri endly and logical to usc . AltaVista

has three tabs available for a sim ple sea rc h, ad vanced sea rc h and

"Images, Audio & Video " sea rc h. A Real Na me Syste m m atch es

sea rc h te r ms agains t regi st ered web sites , brand names and

advert ising slog ans . Adv an ced se arc h all ow s th e user to lim it se arc hes

by date , Boolean searc hes and proximity sea rc hes. Keying in "filtra­

t ion " returned 18 5 62 0 pages. Di sappointingly, results arc not

ranked in anyway althou gh bel ow eac h listing o ne can find up to

th ree func tions including useful translat e and co m pany facts heet

facilit ies (w he re rel evant) with each hit. Related searc hes gave a

co m prehe nsive and

rel evan t list of

possibl e se arc h

g ro upings (wa te r

filt ra t io n; ai r

filt ra t io n; filtration

AltaVistawww.altavista.com

sys tc lns; membrane

filt ration ; gel

filt ration; HVAC

• filtration and m ore ) .

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••faces, is easy to usc and offe rs a practi cal way to focu s searc hes - calling

up severa l related te r ms for eac h qu ery made . For e xam ple keying in

"filtratio n" hri ngs up se vera l potential relevant terms like filter, filt ers ,

filtrate , H EPA, Osmosis, ultrafiltrati on etc ., and returned 3 1045 hits.

The hit s arc gi ven a % rating on rel evance with results sho w n in decreas­

ing order. Excite is probab ly best suite d for finding informati on o n wid e ­

ly di scu ssed main stream topics of int erest.

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

a look at so me

of th e m ost p opula r and effect i ve

search enq ines a va ilable on t h e web .•

•

Excitewww.excite.com

Go Network(formerly Infoseek)www.go.comThe Infoseek eng ine mad e its debut in 1994 but is now known as Go

Ne twork. User friendly and simple to usc like most eng ines these days,

the site provides the user with a wealth of excel lent extra features. A co m ­

prehen sive and fast di ctionary and thesauraus feature arc a g reat tou ch to

this site . Driving Directi on s (tho ugh US focused) and Map ' arc also readily

available. Searching for the word ' filtration' returned some re levant hits

hut disappointingly did not gh'e a figure of how many hits it bad act ually

returned . Th e site listed six rel ated sea rch areas water I1Itration ; air filtra ­

tion ; wat e r filtr ation s)"Ste m; filt rati on system; gel filt ration ; water filtra­

tio n and purificati on . Useful features inelud e the abil ity to sort hits by

date; hide summar ies and translate the page into a range of langu ages.

Ano the r good engi ne for new comers to the web . Exci te offers a lot more

than just a searc h e ng ine g iving th e user new s headlines, free e -mail and

fast -load ing personalised pages. The sea rc h eng ine ind ex es 150 mill ion

pages and in addition o ffers a co mprehe nsive, in -depth subject arrange ­

me nt of 150 000 sources. Excite provides simple and advance d inter-

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Lycoswww.lycos.comT he Lycos searc h eng ine was develop ed at the Carnegie Mellon University,

USA but is now an indep end en t. Keying in th e above web address auto mat ­

ically (in most cases) tak~s you to th e site rel evan t to th e co unt ry you arc

based in, with information tailored to thi s co untry. Co untries listed include

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •Hotbothotbot.lycos.com

most in Europe; most in the Am eri cas including USA (Eng lish and Spanish

vers ions) and some Asia Pacific sites (japan and Korea) . Th e sites ar c

cram med full of useful extras including Business Directories, Travel

Information and Lycos Radi o. Filt ration search on the web returned 408 16

hits ordered by % rel evan ce . Advan ced Searc h options are not as user

fr iend ly as some of the othe r searc h engines available on the web,

• •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Develop ed by

Inkomti Co rp. for­

merly part of the

Network of

Workstation s (N OW)

Project at the

Univ ersity of

Ca liforn ia Berkeley

HotBot is now part

of the Lycos network

(sec abo ve) . HotBot

co mb ines the standard Inkomti search technology with a popul arity hased

service called DirectHi t. Direct Hit tracks wh ich searc h result s users clic k

on and how lon g they stay at each site. T he lon ger the user stays at a site

the higher it is ranked . HotBot has easily accessible d rop -down menus that

pow er th e standard search func tion . Useful optio ns include word filters,

speci fic date ranges , mor e co nte nt t)'pes and domain limi ters that arc easy

to usc. T he site has some useful extras includ e an electric library research

ser vice, jobs , road maps and stocks and qu ot es sec tion

Metasearchers

Metasearch sites or metacrawlers send searches toseveral search engines. Metasearch engines do notallow for input of many search variables so their bestuse is to find hits on obscure items or to see if some­thing is on the Internet. Some of the best-known onesare listed below:

All in one search Page (www.allonesearch.com)Ask Jeeves (www.askjeeves.com)DeBriefing (www.debriefing.com)Dogpile (www.dogpile.com)Find·lt (www.itools.comlfind-it)Highway 61 (www.highway61.com)MetaFind (www.metafind.com)Mamma (www.mamma.com)Metacrawler (www.metacrawler.com)ProFusion (www.profusion.com)SavvySearch (www.savvysearch.com)

Filtration + Separation JanuaryIFebruary 2000 49