Search Engines-#7

I signed up for two beta search engines. Google is certainly an easy search engine to use and I admit to using it to answer most of my reference questions, but as much as I like it I don't think that any one organization should have so much control over information. I found Goshme on the list that was sent out of alternative search engines. http://www.goshme.com/login.jsp It differs from most meta search engines because it keeps the results from the different search engines separate. You type your search terms in the query box and it gives you a list of search engines. You can click on any one, and see what results it brings up. It brings up a number of search engines that I wouldn't have thought of using. (And I found a new squirrel fingerplay for my storytime next month). But it lists some search engines that didn't seem relevant, and which returned zero results. But it is still in the beta stage so maybe that will be worked out later. Definitely worth trying. You do have to set up an account to use it while it is still in the beta stage. I learned a lot from reading the white paper that they posted. It talks about a number of specialized search engines that look in interesting.

The other search engine I signed up for is Powerset, which was written up in this morning's Baltimore Sun. http://www.powerset.com/ It is a natural language search engine. It is very new. You also have to register to use it. They said they are admitting new users slowly and will issue an invitation at some future date. So I have not yet been able to try it out.

Hakia is another natural language search engine. Also beta, but you don't have to register to try it out. http://www.hakia.com/ It will be interesting to try out. The newspaper article said that one of the drawbacks to the natural language search engines is that slight changes in the wording can bring up different results.