| This feature is helpful in shaping a search expression that will focus results. |
| Is it possible to restrict a search to a given date range, to URLs only, to titles only? |
| Similar to natural language searching, this can be useful in searching for concepts or topics that are new or uncommon. |
| This is helpful in metasearch engines, where posting the results from several other engines could otherwise yield a list of returns swollen with duplicate items. |
| Does the engine produce results in descending order of relevancy to the search query, with the percentage of the match given? Often, relevancy is determined by statistical partial match; the greater the number of times the search terms appear in a given item, the higher the item's relevancy ranking. |
| Can the user select whether or not the results include summaries? |
| Can characters be used to include other spellings of a search term (e.g. colo*r = color, colour), plurals, and other variations? If present, is truncation automatic or user-defined? |
| How much help is available from the engine's help menu? How detailed is the description given with regards to features of the engine? (For instance, check the Features tables in these pages: cells that contain [NA] indicate that the information was not available from the engine's site. Other information in square brackets is supplied by this author after personal use of the engine.) |
Just for practice, try using the above criteria to evaluate a search engine, such as Ask Jeeves or another one of your choosing.