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HUM 142

Michelle DiTerlizzi

http://www.metacrawler.com

    My assignment was to analyze Metacrawler.com. This site is one that performs searches for an entered query. Metacrawler chooses to use meta-search, so when searching a particular subject Metacrawler is searching other sites, like google, to find information that you may need, and Infospace powers it.

    I found Metacrawler to be helpful and informative. When I entered a search it gave me back a lot of information. There is a help section called “Tools and Tips”. This help section gives you search options and tips on what is the most successful way to fin what you are looking for, and give you tips on how to search and not use Booleans. Although this site is informative and simple, I like things with some style. This site seemed to plain for me almost generic, the colors and text were straightforward and ordinary. This is a great site for some people who don’t want to bother with any complicated ads or colors.

    When using the search option you may choose “any”, “all”, or “phrase”. You also have the choice of searching the Web, Images, shopping, audio/MP3, Directory, Multimedia, News or Message Boards. This web site also entails you to have an email address. At the bottom of the web page you may look up specific things in the yellow pages, white pages, or locate people. One interesting (maybe disturbing) feature of this service is the people finder section. A note from Professor Booth “As with http://switchboard.com you can locate telephone directory information.

    For a fee (14.95 or 39.95), you can search public records on most people and some private database information. You can probably find your own name here.
    Why would someone use this? Perhaps you need credit or financial information about someone you're doing business with.
Of course you can search public records without paying a fee, but not all these records are now available on the Internet. One set of available records is the database for the Worcester assessor's ofice which contains assessed property values for real estate tax bills. http://www.ci.worcester.ma.us/aso/value_search.htm”.

    There are also links to Entertainment, Computing, Personal, Travel, Mortgages, Insurances, Maps, plus more.

    Searching was simple and easy because when I entered “dance” one hundred and twenty seven (127) different sites came up. Another search that I tried was my name “Michelle DiTerlizzi”. Four sites came up with my name and many others that involved my last name, but referred to Tony DiTerlizzi, a famous artist.

    In conclusion this site is an “ok” site that helps people find what they are looking for on the Internet. It searches many other search engines and gives you a detailed explanation of what you may click on. However if it was my own site I think I would make the site much more interesting.

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