EXCITE Exploration

Search Engine Exercise

This is a comparison of three different but competing Web search engines, searching for information about Kwanzaa

Kwanzaa is an African American Holiday, celebrated December 26th till January 1st. I knew it existed but wanted better details of how it was celebrated, it's significance etc. I began with a simple one word search as a naive enquirer would but the huge range of pages found, some commercial, some information, required a more detailed exploration after the initial search.This meant I could then try out the power, super and advanced searches offered.

Below is my exploration of Excite
Go directly to My exploration of Hotbot
Go directly to My exploration of Altavista

My exploration of Excite

Results Relevance What I liked What I disliked

Kwanzaa alone brought up 2212 references, though this is not stated in your search results. You need to click on About Your Searches
A Power Search says it gained 20700 using my selections that
history, principles, story could be in the search and
Visa, Mastercard, cheque could not.
The relevance rankings started at 69% because they say they cannot be sure a single word hit is relevant. Most were on the Kwanzaa festival, but included many selling Kwanzaa items so not all were appropriate to my needs.
However the best sites,
Kwanzaa Information Center and
Sympatico Happy Kwanzaa
were on the first two pages.
The Power Search produced useful results but was clumsy to use and no specific help was given about how to best use this feature.
Using a checklist, the
Excite Search Wizard to add other related terms though the options given in this search like Xmas were less useful
Being able to have the results listed by web page, which puts the retrieved webpages into their hierachy within a site
The great descriptions of sites on the results screen
The More Like This link, which generates a new search but not on terms you control.
This creates the same problems of related works searches in OPACs which is: what does related mean?
It did not of course extend this particular search, beyond what had already been retrieved.
Being unable to go from the listing by Web pages, to the rest of the results.
I found a lot of dead links.

**My exploration of Excite**
Results	Relevance	What I liked	What I disliked
Kwanzaa alone brought up 2212 references, though this is not stated in your search results. You need to click on About Your Searches A Power Search says it gained 20700 using my selections that history, principles, story could be in the search and Visa, Mastercard, cheque could not.	The relevance rankings started at 69% because they say they cannot be sure a single word hit is relevant. Most were on the Kwanzaa festival, but included many selling Kwanzaa items so not all were appropriate to my needs. However the best sites, Kwanzaa Information Center and Sympatico Happy Kwanzaa were on the first two pages. The Power Search produced useful results but was clumsy to use and no specific help was given about how to best use this feature.	Using a checklist, the Excite Search Wizard to add other related terms though the options given in this search like Xmas were less useful Being able to have the results listed by web page, which puts the retrieved webpages into their hierachy within a site The great descriptions of sites on the results screen	The More Like This link, which generates a new search but not on terms you control. This creates the same problems of related works searches in OPACs which is: what does related mean? It did not of course extend this particular search, beyond what had already been retrieved. Being unable to go from the listing by Web pages, to the rest of the results. I found a lot of dead links.

Go on to My exploration of Hotbot
Go on to My exploration of Altavista

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