A Gift Better than Google

03/01/2003

If Santa had told me he’d bring me a search site better than Google.com this year, I’d have told him he’d had too much egg nog. But Web researchers must have been very good this year, because they got a truly special holiday present.

Years ago, one of my favorite search engines was HotBot. Launched in 1996 by Wired Digital, it was fast, comprehensive and provided an amazing array of control with advanced search filters.

Now owned by Lycos, HotBot has relaunched with a revamped search page that –- dare I say it –- may displace Google.com as my default search page.

Of course, no single search engine is better than Google. That would just be silly talk!

HotBot succeeds by piggybacking on Google and several other search engines, bringing users the best of all worlds. HotBot now makes it incredibly fast and easy to search all four of the best search engines on the Web: Google, FAST, Inktomi, and Teoma.

Rather than some metasearch sites, which combine the results from multiple engines and thus produce overwhelming results, HotBot lists the results separately. Set Google as your default and you get the same results you’d get on Google.com. Then all you have to do is click one of the radio buttons at the top and the results list switches to those of FAST, Inktomi or Teoma. And quickly.

It’s a great way to make your searching more efficient.

By Jonathan Dube