Tutorial 4, CIS133DA

Student Name _______________

1. What is the difference between a web directory(aka search index) and a search engine? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each?

2. AskJeeves (www.ask.com) uses something your book calls "natural language query interface"...what do they mean by that? Go to ask jeeves and see if they talk about how their site works (look for ExpertRank). They also used to do something called "frame trapping", why is that considered bad by many folks?

3. What does a web "robot" or "spider" do? How is that helpful?

4. There are specialized search engines that do not search the entire web, but just parts of it. Find and copy the URL for a search engine that searches for the following:
   1. Jobs
   2. Legal Information
   3. Discussion groups/mailing lists

5. Boolean operators allow you to do some very complex searches. How would you use them to search for chinese and thai food, where you really like dishes with chicken or pork, but no peanuts, as you are allergic? Type the phrase you would type into the search engine here:
   

6. Compare these search engines. Find out what they offer in the way of advanced search options, and what they don't offer.
   1. www.google.com

   2. www.altavista.com

   3. www.yahoo.com

   4. www.ask.com

   5. www.metacrawler.com

7. There are also specialized sites that offer different types of information on the internet. One of them is wikipedia.org, what is it about? Do you use it? And do you see any problems with it?

8. Search for the homepage of "talk like a pirate day". How many sites show up in google? In yahoo or one of the other search engines?