Learning Exercise
Testing Search Engines
Activity that compares two search engines
Course: Library science, Introductory information systems, Introductory English
- Material:
- Google (search engine)
- Date last modified:
- May 16, 2000
- Created by:
- Ralph Westfall
- License:
-
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Search engine that uses a patented PageRank algorithm to generate results that are more relevant than those generated by... see more
Exercise
- Go to the search engine you usually use
- Enter your keywords and search for information
- Check through the first 10-20 items in the results list and see if any of them appear to be close to what you are really looking for
- Click on the links for the pages that look useful, to see if any of them really are what you are actually looking for
- Note the position(s) in the list (1st, 20th, or whatever) of any pages that actually are close to what you are looking for
- Repeat steps 2 through 5 with the Google search engine
- Compare the results (if possible, instructor should summarize results by search engines for the whole class)
- which search engine produced more pages that were useful in the first 10-20 results?
- how close to the top of the list were the most useful pages from each search engine?
- which search engine produced more pages that were useful in the first 10-20 results?