HotBot renames search engine references

(August 3 2003) A search engine is not a search engine is not a search engine.

Most people associate the word search engine with the search site they are using. "I am using the Yahoo! search engine because that's what the site is called."

The fact is that by using the search form found at the search site Yahoo! you are getting results from the Google search engine database.

HotBot is now powered by four search engines: Inktomi, AlltheWeb, Google and Teoma, and you may yourself select which database to use.

In this way you can compare search results from the various search engines, and get additional listings if one search engine fails to deliver.

However, HotBot has clearly decided that "Inktomi," "AlltheWeb" and "Teoma" are unknown entities to the average searcher, and replaced the names with the names of the search sites that are normally associated with these search engines: Lycos (AlltheWeb) and Ask Jeeves (Teoma).

Google remains "Google" and the Inktomi alternative has been named "HotBot" -- after all: HotBot was originally powered by Inktomi only.

Does this matter? Not if you are a reader of Pandia.

The Swedish site Internetbrus notes that HotBot is yet not able to handle many non-English characters (like ä, ö, æ, å) properly. This will make HotBot unsuitable for searches of many European sites.

Actually, Lycos (owned by the same company as HotBot) is not able to handle the Norwegian and Danish ø either, in spite of being powered by Norwegian AlltheWeb. The AlltheWeb site, however, does cope with these letters, which is to be expected.

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