For this week's UIR lab lesson, we did some groundwork for our assignment, which is due in 2 weeks. Choosing from the list of assignment topics, we did research using three search facilities, namely search engines, meta-search engines and subject directories. My chosen topic for the week is "Discuss the impact of terrorism on the world economy".
For the purposes of my research, I used the key phrase "economic impact of terrorism". While all three search facilities produced largely relevant results, there were interesting points of consideration. The search engine returned the most number of hits, 32,000 hits, and did so using only the exact key phrase. In comparison, the meta-search engine produced a mere 42 results, while using individual key words from the key phrase! Using the subject directory yielded even fewer results, just 1, and this was when certain key words were used, instead of the exact key phrase!
From the research conducted, I can conclude that search engines, when compared to meta-search engines and subject directories, offer the most number of relevant hits, while using only the exact key words given. As such, I would recommend search engines to people who need to do voluminous research on any topic.
