Image Copyright ©2000, Yahoo! Inc.
Rating: B
Yahoo is an easy to use, category based, search engine. The categories
in Yahoo are simple and easy to navigate through. Yahoo is probably the easiest category
based search engine to use, both for browsing through categories and searching. Yahoo has
the largest human compiled index, contained in its categories, and also uses another large
index to find results if one are found within the categories. Despite its size the Yahoo
index is small compared to a normal search engine index, and so research, or
searches for obscure information should not be performed using Yahoo. Yahoo also offers a
number of non-search features, such as email, online auctions, games, chats, and web
hosting.
Pros and Cons:
PROS |
CONS |
| Because of the categories, Yahoo is very good for finding
common information, or a number of sites about a common topic. |
If even a single Yahoo result is found Yahoo will not go to
external databases, so if any Yahoo results matches your search, these will be all you
see. |
| Because of Yahoo's many other assets, the search engine
feels much less commercial then most others. |
Because of the relatively small size of the Yahoo index,
and the nature of the search algorithms, searches for obscure information will often turn
up irrelevant sites. |
| The web site search results are almost always displayed
well, with a lot of content showing. |
Unless operators are used the search algorithm will return
many irrelevant results, although these do usually appear near the bottom. |
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