Finding a needle in cyberspace
Using the major search engines on the Web, find the best way to look for a needle. Fill out the following chart, noting the number of hits you receive in each of the search engines for the word needle and the phrase "Space Needle." Then, answer the questions at the bottom of the page.
| Search Engine | Search for: needle | Search for: "Space Needle" |
| Excite | ||
| Hotbot | ||
| Webcrawler | ||
| Yahoo! |
- Which search engine would be the best if you were looking for something very obscure?
- Did searching for "Space Needle" always result in more hits or less hits than searching for needle? Why?
- Which search engine seemed to display the result fastest?
- Try another search. This time, look for sites that contain all of these words: needle, sleeping, and beauty. (Hint: On many of the search engines you can specify that certain words MUST be included by adding a + in front of the word: +needle +sleeping +beauty.)
Return to Chapter 5.