In Search Of...

By
31 August 2001 07:02 PM
Tags: search, query, result, site

LookSmart AU

The Australian LookSmart has a much different look and feel than the US site reviewed above. We found the local version to have a much friendlier and tighter layout. The one thing that was noticeably missing, however, was a simple method of specifying whether a search is worldwide or limited to Australian sites. Below the search window are two tabs labelled "Australia" and "The World", but switching between them requires the reloading of the entire page--a step that could get quite annoying when doing several searches. Even with the "World" tab selected, a search for a generic word like "bicycle" yielded all Australian sites in the top ten.

Nor is there any apparent way to specify an advanced search. A bit of general search information can be found in the help section, but this is not very useful. Like on the US site, the Help section tells you that a category search actually means manually browsing the LookSmart categories for topics.

Search results are organised into three tiers: categories from LookSmart are listed first, followed by LookSmart site matches, then general site matches.

For the most part, LookSmart's results are on the mark, especially with multi-word queries and travel-related searches. Look Smart's main weakness, however, is that there seems to be no way to exclude terms from a search. Boolean operators aren't supported, and no advanced search options exist.

LookSmart AU

Rating3

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Talkback 1 comments

    Matilda Keith -- 04/01/06 (in reply to #120126443)

    The Correct address for Matilda is
    http://www.matildasearch.com
    Is theee any chance you coulds replace your content with a simple link?
    Keith

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