IxQuick
Search Engine Review - IxQuick
2-21-03
Name of Search? IxQuick
URL? http://ixquick.com
Audience? The exact quote from this site regarding audience is "it was created keeping researchers, educators, historians, librarians, scholars, students and the world's scientific, literary and media community in mind: those who are dedicated to keeping us better informed and making all of our lives richer, easier and more fulfilling. Not an easy audience to play to." I think scholarly and educated researchers/librarians could manage this site but not many others. Certainly elementary students would not be able to handle it, but some smarter secondary students may stand a chance.
Type? Metasearch engine
Claim to Fame? They say they are...
* The fastest growing since 1999
* The world's most powerful metasearch engine!
* Serving 1,430,000 pages per weekday
Do Boolean Operators work? Yes
Narrow search with quotes? Yes
Natural Language? Yes
Note: Because this is a metaserach engine, it allows users to search using all types of features, and is created to manipulate a user's search terms into the types each smaller search engine requires.
***I would strongly recommend users visit the "ixquick backstage" link before using this search engine.
Advanced Search Feature? This engine is searchable by the Web, MP3, News articles, and picture limiters. It also allows you to decide if you want to search all of the search engines or just a few at a time.
Special Features? At the bottom of some hits, you will find a link titled highlights. If you click on this link you'll see the webpage and that the information you searched is highlighted. Some hits also include more results from other search engines, as well as related searches.
Strengths? IxQuick nicely lays out your hits and shows clearly where you can find other results with the click of a button. Next to your hits there are clear markings of sites that are "sponsored" by organizations or .coms to come up as hits on this site. There is also a five star system of reviewing most of the hits and this can be seen next to the title of the site. Another feature I see as a strength is the one or two sentence description of what will be found on that site.
Weaknesses? There are just too many hits for students to wade through.
General Comment About this Search Mechanism: This is a good place to start research before narrowing it down. But, it does give a little too much information for the average student who may be using it to do a project. I would use it as a way to show students how much information is out there on their subject and would definitely not recommend it to elementary school students.
RATING (0-poor; 10-great)
Navigation: 7 - easy to search for a person with good skills
Easy to Read: 7 - reading hits to see what is valuable is not difficult at all
Find what you want: 6 - you'll find more than you ever knew you needed
Organization of home page: 10 - this site has one of the best suggestions features I've seen in their "backstage" section
Overall: 7.5 - I'd use it if I didn't know where else to begin but I would never recommend it to a student.
