AltaVista

Rating: A-

AltaVista is a very good, all around, search engine. It has a very large database leading to more results on obscure searches. AltaVista also has many useful features, such as special commands allowing to include searches for Java Aplets, or domains in your search. AltaVista also offers multimedia searching, a translator, and many other useful features. In general these features are easy to use, and AltaVista has an extensive help section that is easy to access.

Pros and Cons:

PROS	CONS
Good for finding obscure topics, due to the large size of the database.	Boolean searching, and some other features, are only enabled in "advanced" mode.
In general, when results are returned for more popular search, the sites are sorted well, with better results at the top.	It is one of the more commercialized search engines. More banners, and corporate links then most other engines.
Great overall search engine.	The format that the results are shown in is somewhat confusing, and hard to read.

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