Image Copyright ©2000, Lycos Inc.
Rating: C-
Lycos is a category based search engine. In general the number of
categories on Lycos is small. I found that, unlike Yahoo, most
results on obscure subjects will come from a general "catalogue" and not from
one of the Lycos categories. Also the search algorithms tended to return mostly irrelevant
web pages from this catalogue. This might be due to the relatively recent nature of Lycos'
categories (since April 1999) but it still detracts from the usefulness of this search
engine. Despite all of this, Lycos does provide some useful features, and the Lycos home
page can be set up to provide a lot of useful information.
Pros and Cons:
PROS |
CONS |
| Lycos displays results in a straight forward, and easy to
read manner. |
Not very many categories, most search results will come
from a general index, on all but the most popular topics. |
| The category system that Lycos uses is straight forward,
and it is easy to find the category you want by browsing, instead of searching for it. |
The search results are sorted strangely, and even through
the use of operators the relevant results were hard to get. |
| Lycos searches through news articles for information on
your search. These articles seemed to be more relevant then the web site matches, although
they are not always news articles. |
Better searches can be found through Lycos' affiliates Fast Search and
Hot Bot. |
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