I chose to explore these search engines by looking at how they would deal with the letters 'ICF' - which can stand for a number of different things - Insulated Concrete Forms, Intermediate Care Facility, among others.
In Rollyo, I had to choose first from a number of categories (ie. Home Repair, Health, Parenting, Top News) before it would give me any results. (And, I could only search one category at a time.) In all categories, they listed the sites, in which they had conducted the search, in a box off to the left of the page. I like that it was possible to link to the home page for each of these sites. In the Home Repair category, the search turned up information on Insulated Concrete Forms. In the Health and Parenting sites, the search turned up a number of associations with those initials. The News category turned up a real variety. An added bonus to Rollyo is that their search page can be customized to suit your needs.
In both Mamma and Dogpile, most of the results were vendor sites. In Mamma, there would be a note by each result stating 'Sponsored by ___' or 'Ads by__' and in Dogpile, (Found on__). Unlike Google and Yahoo searches, which separate out their Ads and Sponsored links in boxes to the side and top, both Mamma and Dogpile keep all their results in one list. Another helpful tool in Google and Yahoo is the drop down menu that shows up during the initial input of your search - before you press the Search button. This helps to identify what you are really looking for.
In Rollyo, I had to choose first from a number of categories (ie. Home Repair, Health, Parenting, Top News) before it would give me any results. (And, I could only search one category at a time.) In all categories, they listed the sites, in which they had conducted the search, in a box off to the left of the page. I like that it was possible to link to the home page for each of these sites. In the Home Repair category, the search turned up information on Insulated Concrete Forms. In the Health and Parenting sites, the search turned up a number of associations with those initials. The News category turned up a real variety. An added bonus to Rollyo is that their search page can be customized to suit your needs.
In both Mamma and Dogpile, most of the results were vendor sites. In Mamma, there would be a note by each result stating 'Sponsored by ___' or 'Ads by__' and in Dogpile, (Found on__). Unlike Google and Yahoo searches, which separate out their Ads and Sponsored links in boxes to the side and top, both Mamma and Dogpile keep all their results in one list. Another helpful tool in Google and Yahoo is the drop down menu that shows up during the initial input of your search - before you press the Search button. This helps to identify what you are really looking for.
I enjoyed reading through the UC Berkeley search engine page, found at http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/SearchEngines.html, and some of its links to other interesting pages. I will return there in the near future, I'm sure. One of the eye-opening tidbits of information that I learned from this article was that "80% of the pages in a major search engine's database exist only in that database" so "getting a 'second opinion' can be worth your time." I plan to expand my use of search engines with my very next search.
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