Task 3 - Search Engines

Dear all,
This week, for our third posting, we have to discuss about search engines and compare and contrast between the search engines that are available in the net. Basically, as being told by my tutor, Assoc. Prof. Datin Dr. Norizan, we are required to discuss about these four popular search engines; mamma.com, google scholar, eric digest and yahoo.com. I'll go through briefly one by one first.



I've been introduced to this very powerful search engine, mamma.com during Language and ICT tutorial. Mamma.com is a metasearch engine, which is a search tool that sends user requests to several other search engines and/or databases and aggregates the results into a single list or displays them according to their source.(wikipedia). Plus, momma.com only collects the top results from the best search engines on the internet. Can you imagine you can get the results of ten search engines by only using one search engine. Before this, I thought mamma.com can only be used for academic purposes, but it is more than that. There are many search options that I can choose like web, videos, jobs, shop, yellow pages and also white pages. I've tried to find some videos on my favourite movie, "Twilight", and guess what, the videos are separated into their own categories like viral videos, movie trailers, music, games and so on. So, it is easier for me to specify my search. Just like google.com, there is a way to make my search more powerful. Here is the screenshot on how we can enhance our search. The one I've circled is the "key" part.


ERICDigests.org
Even after using a very powerful search engine, I still couldn't find any logo for ericdigest.org. So, if anyone has one, please do share with me. My first impression when I opened ericdigest.org is, "dull". No offence. Well, it's 100% for educational or academic purposes, how can I expect it to be colourful right. Let's talk about what is ericdigest.org. According to the website itself, ericdigest.org is short reports on topics of prime current interest in education. There are a large variety of topics covered including teaching, learning, libraries, charter schools, special education, higher education, home schooling and many more. Ericdigesr.org is designed to provide an overview of information on a given topic, plus references to items providing more detailed information. This search engine is very useful for students and teachers especially in English Language field like me.



Next is Google scholar. I bet all of us have heard about "Google", but not google scholar. The first time I bumped into google scholar was when I was using google search engine, to find information for task completion. One of the search results highlighted was, "Google scholar". In short, google scholar is a search engine that provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, abstracts and articles, from academic publishers, professional societies, universities and other scholarly organizations. Google scholar helps the user to identify the most relevant research across the world of scholarly research. For example, when I typed "Twilight", none of the result is on the famous movie, "Twilight", but all are articles related to the word "twilight". Google scholar even stated on the first hand for each articles on how many citations, from where the article is and how many versions does the article has. How useful isn't it for students and teachers or lecturers.



Last but not least is yahoo.com which is a very popular search engine for all the internet users all over the world, be it children or grown-ups. Yahoo.com has its own sentimental value for me. The first time I was introduced to internet, I only know and use yahoo.com and I really like it. I like yahoo.com because everytime I typed something in the search box, it will appear no matter what, unless I typed it wrongly. For a primary school student like me during that time, I felt like yahoo.com is a miracle and I don't really use google because it has less colours compare to yahoo's websites. What to expect from a little kid right. And now, I'm almost turning 20, and I am barely able to count how many times have I used yahoo.com per year. I prefer google because it is not distracted by other elements that are featured in yahoo.com like news, advertisements, services provided and many more which make the page looks very crowded. I don't really explain what yahoo.com is since I believe that most of us know what it is and basically, yahoo.com is another search engine apart from google and mamma.com.


Simmilarities

• All are used as a search engine whether to find informations regarding academic, entertainment or just simply searching for something or pictures.
• For yahoo.com and mamma.com, we can use these two sites to not only find information about academic information, but also for entertainment.
• Google scholar and Ericdigest.org are search engines for academic purposes only. Here I am talking about "Google Scholar", not "Google" if in case anyone is confused with my explanation.
  
• For google scholar and mamma.com, we can specify our search so that the hits that we are going to get is less and precise.

Differences

• Not all search engines can be used to search for everything like ericdigest.org and google scholar, which are for academic purposes only.
• Only yahoo.com provides e-mail service and once again I emphasise, I'm not talking about "Google".
• For me, yahoo.com is not very user friendly because the whole thing is put into one page, including news, advertisement, services provided by yahoo and also search box. It is very crowded and I choose not to use it because it is a bit slow to finish loading.
• Mamma.com is the only metasearch engine among these four search engines that I have to discuss. Of course it's search result is the best.

That's all a little bit about some powerful search engines. But still, I prefer to use Google.com because it has all in one. You just have to know the correct way to use it like what have been lectured today on "Google-Fu" which is something new, very informative and useful. I'm not saying that other search engines are not good. Each has its own advantages and disadvantages. That's all from me, hope to hear others view also. Till the next post.




Truly,