Discuss the shortcomings of traditional search engines and identify and discuss alternatives

What will be an ideal response?

Answer: For all their ease and power, conventional search engines have three primary shortcomings: (1) no human editors are involved to evaluate the quality or ranking of the search results; (2) various engines use different search techniques, so they often find different material; and (3) search engines can't reach all the content on some websites (this part of the Internet is sometimes called the hidden Internet or the deep Internet). A variety of tools are available to overcome these weaknesses of general-purpose search engines, and you should consider one or more of them in your business research. First, web directories, such as the Open Directory Project, use human editors to categorize and evaluate websites. A variety of other directories focus on specific media types, such as blogs or podcasts. Second, metasearch engines help overcome the differences among search engines by formatting your search request for multiple search engines, making it easy to find a broader range of results. With a few clicks, you can compare results from multiple search engines to make sure you are getting a broad view of the material. Third, online databases help address the challenge of the hidden Internet by offering access to newspapers, magazines, journals, digital copies of books, and other resources often not available with standard search engines. Some of these databases offer free access to the public, but others require a subscription. Also, a variety of specialized search engines now exist to reach various parts of the hidden Internet.