Pleasant Design, Poor Search
Written: Apr 18 '01
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The Bottom Line
It is an okay starting point on the Internet, but there are definitely better portals/search engines out there than Excite.
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Excite is one of the more popular search engines on the Internet. Like many of its peers (other than Google), Excite has changed itself from just a pure search engine to more of an Internet portal.
Quite frankly, I do not find Excite too exciting with its offerings. It has many added features, such as address book, e-mail, calendar, personalization, even instant messenger, and more. However, the depth and breadth of its offerings are not comparable to Yahoo. Neither is its ease of use, which is often less straightforward than Yahoo. I am not saying this based on a quick look at Excite.com, but rather as a conclusion of spending about two months trying to get myself to like it. In the end, I would pick Yahoo over Excite for several reasons:
1) Excite is not as easy to use as Yahoo
2) Excite's offering is not as comprehensive as Yahoo
3) Excite's search has not performed as well as Yahoo (It's more like Excite's search has not performed as well as Yahoo + Google, since Yahoo utilizes Google when it fails to find related sites in its own directory.)
These observations are obviously somewhat subjective. I also want to point out that each search engine has its own strengths and weaknesses. For example, Northern Light and AltaVista are great for full-text search. Yahoo is great for its hand-picked directories, and Google does a wonderful job ranking relevant results. Excite is sort of the jack of all trades but master of none by a wide margin.
So, why did I try Excite for two months? I think Excite looks a lot better than Yahoo after you personalize it. It has a more pleasant personalization design that is more of a "designer" look than Yahoo or Lycos. I also like the fact that Excite tends to utilize screen estate better by expanding to the full width of the available space in the browser, rather than leaving some areas on the side blank. This allows more information oon the personalization page without having to scroll.
In the end, however, the ease of use, practicality, and functionality wins out and I decided that Excite is simply not good enough as a portal for things I want to do on the Internet.
Here is a quick comparison of Excite for different tasks.
- Its directories are limited comparing to Yahoo.
- The search results are not as relevant or high quality comparing to Google or Northern Light.
- While Excite allows searches for specific media (mp3, web, photo, news...), so does AltaVista, and AltaVista knows about far more pages/files on the Internet than Excite.
Excite is decent, but not great or good enough comparing to other choices. I would suggest anyone interested to take a look, but do not settle on using Excite without exploring others.
Recommended:
No
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About the Author
Member: Shane
Location: Illinois
Reviews written: 27
Trusted by: 3 members
About Me: A computer/gadget enthusiast, Shane is a frequent traveler who has lived in three different countries.
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