What is your favorite search engine? Most of us like Google so well, it’s become a verb: “I’ll Google it!” Actually, there are several other good search engines you can use. As one example, Ask.com, which you may remember as Ask Jeeves, does better relevance searching than Google. Not all search engines find the same results or organize results the same way. For most of your searches, your favorite search engine will be just fine, but for some searches, you might want more control over the results and the way they’re organized.
If Google’s millions of results are a bit overwhelming, you might like Librarians’ Internet Index , which lists only sites that have been reviewed and vetted by professional librarians. LII’s slogan is “websites you can trust.” You won’t get nearly as many results—two dozen rather than two million, for example—but each site will have responsible authorship, sponsorship, and content. If you don’t find what you want on LII, not to worry, they offer a page called “Search Beyond LII” . This page gives you 6 regular search engines, including Google; 2 blog search engines; 4 news search engines; and 4 librarian-built search tools, including one that’s “child-friendly.” That’s 16 of the best search engines, besides their own, all on one page!
Let’s compare Google and LII by searching the same topic, Yosemite, with each search engine. Google gives us 10,100,000 results, and LII gives us 25. To level the playing field, let’s just compare Google’s first 25 with LII’s results. First, 15 of the top Google results relate to travel and tourism, mostly to tours and lodging in Yosemite. We didn’t narrow our search (see last month’s Web Wise), so we got a lot of hotels, cabins, etc. LII gave us a lot of variety: the first 2 sites were also in the Google search, but after that, we were in new territory with Yosemite’s Buffalo Soldiers, rock climbing, John Muir, stereography and digital photos, biking (non-motorized), geology, art, Sierra warming, and hydroelectric issues. Whew.
Now let’s compare the listing for one site that was found by both Google and LII, the official National Park Service site for Yosemite . This listing was #1 on Google and #13 on LII. Google gives us this description of the site, “Yosemite National Park, one of the first wilderness parks in the United States, is best known for its waterfalls, but within its nearly 1200 square miles, ...” and links to 8 subheadings. LII gives us this description, “The official National Park Service (NPS) website for this California park contains visitor information (including weather forecasts and current road conditions and closures), webcams, several audio and video presentations about the park, and essays about history and culture, environmental factors (such as air quality), and wildlife and plants in the park. Also includes park planning and fire management documents.” LII also gives us links to other California recreation sites, and other national parks and forests.
But wait, there’s more! LII also gives you more information about each site, including who reviewed it and when, and allows you to comment on their review of the site. You can also email the site link directly from LII.
Just for fun, play around with some of the Web search engines listed on the “Search Beyond LII” page . You might decide to stop Googling everything!
Dr. Collins is the Taft College Library and Learning Resources Director.