Google provides an excellent web search; image, video, news, blog, and shopping database; and specialized searches for journal articles and books.  Provides a cache feature that allows the user to view a cached copy of the page last indexed.  Non-search services include: e-mail, satellite images, maps, readers, translator, and sharable calendar.
The homepage is clean and clear of clutter.  If the user is signed into their account, then the homepage will provide pictorial links of the pages most visited. 

                The advanced field options include title, domain, link, language, and date.  Boolean combinations can be used.  “AND” is automatically considered, “OR” can be used, and the minus symbol (-) is used in place of the Boolean “NOT.  Limits that can be selected are numeric range options, limit search to region, last updated, limit to particular site, reading level, file type, and usage rights.  Google also provides a SafeSearch option to block adult content. The search can be set to anywhere on the page, the title, in the text, by URL, or by links. Search results can be narrowed by format such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Wordperfect, and PDF. 
Images were easily to find using the images database from the tool bar.  Images can be saved by right clicking.  Advanced search includes size, color, type, time, and usage rights.
It is easy to find videos by selecting “Videos” from the tool bar list.  There were videos from multiple sources such as BBC, CBS Chicago, Northwestern University, Chicago Tribune, and CNN.  Advanced search is available by duration, time, quality, source, and closed caption.
It is easy to find videos by selecting “Videos” from the tool bar list.  There were videos from multiple sources such as BBC, CBS Chicago, Northwestern University, Chicago Tribune, and CNN.  Advanced search is available by duration, time, quality, source, and closed caption.
 

                Bing’s homepage uses changing wallpaper from their image database, giving the homepage a fresh and fun look.  The one unappealing aspect of the homepage is the suggestions on the bottom of the screen, but thankfully they are easy to customize and remove.

                Boolean searches are permitted.  The Boolean word “AND” are automatically integrated, “OR” (or the symbol “|”) can be used as long as it is enclosed in parentheses, “NOT” (or “-“) can also be used to limit the search.  The search engine automatically searches for plurals. If a search for only one form of a word is needed, place a plus sign (+) in front of the required word.  Other search limits are available by using prefixes. The engine only accepts 150 characters (including spaces) per search.  Bing provides a Safe Search in its’ settings.
                Bing is great for images, and the videos are displayed well. The first screen of page one of the web search for videos on air pollution in Chicago, included results from BBC, YouTube, Chicago Tribune, MSN, CBS, and Digital Trends.  I followed the directions in our required reading on how to do a title search.  I wrote intitle:”air pollution in Chicago” but my results were more random for images and video than they were for my standard search.  
                The results can be limited by time.  The time frame can be easily set for the past 24 hours, past week, past month, or by a custom range (Which I found very useful).
 

                The homepage reminds me of Google’s. They advertise themselves as similar to Google, but as “The search engine that doesn't track you.” The user can easily change the homepage theme with just two clicks.

                Search settings include: Region, Language, Safe Search, Instant Answers, Auto-Load, Auto-Suggest, New Window, Advertisements, Keyboard Shortcuts, Units of Measure (US, Metric, No preference), Directions Source (Bing Maps, Google Maps, Here Maps, OpenstreetMap), page break numbers, browser instructions, and Homepage Onboarding Education (Showing educational information on the homepage).

                The site allows users to use prefixes for their searches.  Site searches are limited to one domain at a time. Filters can also be abbreviated, for example “inbody:” to “b:,” “intitle:” to “t:,” and “filetype:” to “f:.”  Like most of the search engines tested, “AND” is automatically used by default.  “OR” can be used with adjacent words, to be used in a phrase enclose the word in double quotation marks.  DuckDuckGo does not have a custom time search, but results can be limited to the Past Day, Past Week, or Past Month.  Upon further inspection of the page, it was discovered that the site does not list the number of results found.

                   Dogpile does not crawl the web compiling their own searchable databases, they search the databases of several sets of individual search engines at the same time.
 

           The homepage is very simple.  Ask.com has links on the bottom of the homepage for Art & Literature, Beauty & Fashion, Education, Food, Government & Politics, Hobbies & Games, Math, and World View to name just a few.  

                Besides its web search, Ask includes a database of Questions and Answers, and a database for images and video.   


                Dogpile is a metasearch engine, it displays results from several different Web search tools including Bing, Yahoo!, Ask, MSN Search, and Google.  Dogpile’s homepage is playful. On the day of my research the wallpaper featured two dogs playing basketball for March Madness.  The homepage is not cluttered.  There are two columns of links, Favorite Fetches which are three of the most popular searches, and Quick Starts that have links for Making Dogpile your homepage, bookmark and share, and install Dogpile Chrome Extension. Tabs over the search bar allow the user to choose from the databases web, images, videos, news, or shopping.  The preference link is a setting for the Search Filter.  The user can decide whether to display their recent searches by turning on or off the option.

                By preforming a search of Dogpile’s limits, I found that searches are limited to 110 characters.  The first five results I received for my “air pollution in Chicago” search were advertisements.  Following the advertisements was a suggestion section called “Are you looking for?” followed by Shopping Results, and then finally Web Results with a sponsored link first and more advertisements mixed in the results.  This site is bombarded with ads.  Due to advertisements, the results for pollution videos for Chicago produced a small selection of videos per page compared to the other search engines.

                The site supports Boolean searches for "all of these words," "the exact phrase," any of these words," or "none of these words."  The timeframe search can be by date, to find sites updated after a certain date, before a certain date, and between two dates. Searches can be limited by language and domain, from the menu.  Dogpile also has an adult filter to include or exclude adult content.  From my search, I was able to perform an advanced search with images but not video.