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Making it Easy for you to Find what you need
on the web in Search Engines, Blogs, Rss, News sources and more
How to use Dunbeacon.net | Contact | Blog
The two sections below explain this and give access to our resources. UPDATE: We are now featuring articles covering many subjects, but focusing on making money online. We also have a blog about making money online. |
| Investigating the search engines |
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| Here we look at the individual search engines which are available, and investigate their strengths and weaknesses. We use a set of common terms of various types to see how useful the returned results actually are, and to make comparisons. In most cases, we also consider the relevance of the advertising beside or within the results. These common terms are in the following areas - 1. Commercial product - digital cameras 2. Commercial product actual model - a product brand + model name 3. Commercial purchase - buy CDs 4. Entertainment - Britney Spears 5. Entertainment - games cheats 6. Precise requirement - Berkeley sociology 7. Precise requirement - Dublin Ireland hotel 8. Precise / Travel - New York London airfare 9. Research - asthma information 10. Research - Iraq maps 11. Searching - Dogpile.com 12. Searching - Ask Jeeves
Why did we select these terms? A large percentage of searches on every search engine is still for search engine or web site names - most with the .com appended. In other words, people search for google.com, youtube.com, myspace.com, mapquest.com, ebay.com, yahoo.com, amazon.com instead of just typing the URL into the browser's address field or using a bookmark. What results do people get? In most cases, a search like this, while probably due to simple ignorance of how to use a web browser, gives quite a useful list of the tools, services and options available for that engine. For example, a search for yahoo.com in Google gives access to Yahoo mail, web search, Yahoo finance, Yahoo news, Yahoo maps and their web directory. The next biggest group of searches is for entertainment related items, things like game cheats, music lyrics, celebrities (invariably female), downloads, music band names, jokes, sex or pornography, sports like NFL, ringtones and TV program names. The top search term which could be considered 'research' in any way is Wikipedia, which is probably related to the need for copy and paste text for a homework project; there are always many searches for maps and dictionary, which may also be for homework; baby names; white pages; and cats and dogs. The first commercial searches (outside of those for web properties like ebay or amazon) to appear on lists of most searched terms are for these - Southwest Airlines, airline tickets, Canada RX, Costco, travel, yellow pages and possibly flowers (for sending as gifts). Of course the search engines are well aware of the lucrative nature of such searches for advertisers, and can command large fees for any sort of exposure of advertising material of any form within or beside their 'pure' search results. In our analysis of each engine, we will look at how well the distinction is made between advertising and the results themselves, but also how useful the adverts themselves are to the user. (If you really want advertising-free listings for any search, try the Open Directory.) We have also used a few precise searches, where the requirement of the searcher is fairly obvious, to see which engines hit the target successfully. On each page you can also read about user experiences, or add your own comments and experiences with the engines, or any tips you have for searching with them. Here are our investigations - |
Subject
Sections
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Here we give access to various popular search terms using the various search engines described above, and in many others. These are listed by general search, news, blogs, commercial results and metasearch. |
| Money and Finances |
Shopping |
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| Entertainment |
Travel |
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| At Home |
Living |
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| Reference |
Health |
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