Practical 4 & 5

This week's practical would spread for two weeks, week 5 as well as 6. The activity for this week is to list the research topic based on the Assignment 1, after which choose relevant keywords to search for relevant 3 resources. We are required to use the following search facilities to search for the 3 resources.

· Search engine
· Meta search engine
· Subject directory


Search Engine: Google

URL: http://www.barna.org/FlexPage.aspx?Page=Topic&TopicID=37

Comments:

By using key words in my search, I am able to hit on my targeted search a higher rate compared to phrasing my search in the form of sentences. The results were displayed in a ranking order showing the websites that are closer to my findings situated on the top while those that are less relevant further down the pages. Contents likewise are more relevant and reliable when keywords are used in the search. Irrelevant information and websites are narrowed down and hence produces more efficient results.


Meta Search Engine: Metacrawler

URL: http://www.connectwithkids.com/teentrends/

Comments:

For advanced information search, meta-search engine would be a reliable search facility.After using metacrawler for my research, I find that the chances for me hitting on to my intended target are bigger as compared to normal search engines. This is because metacrawler actually uses many other search engines in one request. Rather than restricting and relying on just one search facility to do the job, it gathers all the information that the other search engines retrieved and displays it on its own. This simply means a five in one function. The contents displayed are some how more or less similar to that of the individual search engine just that it has a bigger picture from different perspectives.

However, meta-search engines do not rank their results in terms of web links that are closely related to the searched words/phrase on top and those that are less related further down. Instead, they categorize their search results together with those that are retrieved from the same search engine in the same section. Viewers can choose to view only searched results from a particular search engine or from meta crawler's search function.


Subject Directory: Yahoo Directory

URL: http://createdigitalmusic.com/

Comments:

Subject directories are human-edited and provides services much based on subjects or topics that users post and requests. The results retrieved are quite different from those of the meta search engines. Instead, it shows related directory categories on the top of the displayed results together with the relavant web links that are closely related to the searched key words/phrase.