heyhey.

for practical 4&5, i learnt how to use different type of search faculty and about the effectiveness of each search faculty. furthermore, i learnt to use common boolean operators like 'AND', 'OR' to search for information.

Example used for each type of search faculty:

Search Engine: http://www.msn.com/
Meta Search Engine: http://www.metacrawler.com/
Subject Directory: Yahoo! Directory

Questions in practical 4&5:

Compare the search results. Identify 2 characteristic that make all 3 search facilities similar or different from one another.
The difference between all 3 search facilities is the number of hits. Using the same keywords, the search engine, msn.com has the most number of hits. whereas, metacrawler.com has 71 and Yahoo! Directory has 4 directory. from my point of view, search engine is the most powerful. Other than the number of hits, the result ranking is different from the 3 search facilities. i can say that search engine has the most relevant result than the other 2.

Do you find any strength/weakness of each of them, in terms of search capabilities?
yes. i find weakness in metacrawler.com, where in the results, they even include an advertisement from Google, which i find not that relevant.

Overall, which search facility best meet your searching needs? Why?
The search engine, msn.com. i found out that it gives me more relevant results than the other search facilities. Hence, it will help me best in my searching needs.

Search engine is the best!
Syima