Task 15

I usually just use whatever default search engine my browser of the moment uses. I use AOL at home, Mozilla Firefox in the basement at work, and whatever the circ desk offers (Internet Explorer?). It looks as though AOL & Mozilla both use Google. I don't know what the circ desk computers are using.

For this experiment I tried out 3 search engines: Yahoo!, Google, and Ask.com. I typed in "baking stone" as my search terms. I'd like to know more about them because I'm thinking of buying one. So prices were of interest to me too. All three engines pulled up the same basic sites: Amazon, King Arthur's Baker's Catalogue, Pampered Chef, Kitchen Supply, etc. What varied most was the order in which these sites were given and each also listed their own more obscure sites. In my opinion, Google offered the best results with a mix of information and commercial sites.

To be honest, I think the fuss over search engines is largely irrelevant for the average person. I don't think most people conduct sophisticated searches using Boolean operators very frequently. If you use reasonable search terms and spend enough time on a topic I think you can pretty much find what you need regardless of which search engine you use. Granted, we all want our lives made easier, but I don't think it gets much easier than typing in a few words and clicking a few times to have all kinds of info available. I think the people who care most about which search engine is best are the IT types who are actually designing them and the business/investor types who have some sort of monetary interest.

What is of greater importance to me is the speed of my Internet connection. Cable versus dial-up would make my searches far more efficient that switching search engines I think.