Northern Light

Rating: B+

Northern Light has a huge database. One of the largest in any search engine. It contains web sites, and also many other types of documents, some of witch you must pay to retrieve through Northern Light. These resources include newspapers and magazines. This search engine is designed specifically for use in research, and I would not recommend it for more general uses, unless they relate to a very obscure subject. In that case the size of Northern Light's database will make it very useful. The search algorithm seems to return very good results. Northern Light also offers advanced features, allowing you to search through various other indexes.

Pros and Cons:

PROS	CONS
The sorting of results by relevancy is very good, even for searches without any operators used.	The results are presented in a confusing way, that is sometimes hard to read.
Your search is organized into "custom search folders" which can be useful for reducing the huge number of results Northern Light will return.	The search engine does not seem to include anything for the same, or extremely similar results from being displayed many times.
Less commercial seeming then most of the general search engines.	Being charged for some results, even if they may be rare for most types of searches, can make Northern Light a little less appealing for less serious researchers

Go Back