Review of Direct Hit
by Greg R. Notess
Direct Hit RIP. This review will continue to be available to provide an historical record of the search capabilities and database Direct Hit used to have. It no longer reflects how Direct Hit currently behaves. Ask Jeeves, the current owner of Direct Hit, is now pushing its other search engine, Teoma instead. |
Direct Hit is a popularity engine which gives results based upon what other searchers have chosen on previous searches for the same terms. It has always been a rather small search engine. Use the table of contents on the left to navigate this review.
Databases: Direct Hit offers only its own databases on its site. It is a partner database used and shown in results by HotBot and Lycos. Other partners include MSN Search, LookSmart, and others.
Strengths:
* Great for seeing what other searchers choose, especially on popular topics
Weaknesses:
* Not as useful on specific topics, finding new sites, or tracking down information on less popular sites.
* Very small database
Default Operation: Multiple search terms are matched against previous searches. Direct Hit only matches against previous queries, not the records, so most of the following features are not used directly.
Boolean Searching: Not used directly
Proximity Searching: Not used directly
Truncation: Not used directly
Case Sensitivity: Not used directly
Field Searching: Not used directly
Limits: Not used directly
Stop Words: Direct Hit only matches against previous queries, not the records.
Sorting: Sites are sorted based on how popular they were among previous searchers. Popularity is measured by which hits people click on.
Display: Direct Hit displays only 10 records. For each, it gives a title linked to the URL, an extract, and the URL.