Review of HotBot

HotBot, owned by Terra/Lycos, is one of older Web search engines. Originally it just used the Inktomi database and then added Direct Hit and the Open Directory. Then in Dec. 2002, it relaunched as a multiple search engine with Inktomi, Fast, Google, and Teoma. In July 2003, they stayed with the same four databases, but renamed them HotBot, Lycos, Google, and Ask Jeeves. Lycos was dropped in March 2004. This review covers HotBot using the Inktomi database, which they now call "HotBot." See the Google and Teoma (Ask Jeeves) reviews for more details on how their database and interface work, bearing in mind that not all features are available at HotBot. The basic search screen shows no options, but choose Advanced Search for the full range of search features. To see how HotBot used to work, see the old Search Engine Showdown Review. Use the table of contents on the left to navigate this review.

Databases: HotBot offers the choice of three search engine databases:

• HotBot (which is actually a Yahoo!/Inktomi database, and the version reviewed here)
• Google
• Ask Jeeves (the Teoma databases

Strengths

• Advanced searching capabilities
• Quick check of three major databases
• Advanced search help

Weaknesses

• Does not include all advanced features of each of the four databases
• No cached copies of pages
• Only displays a few hits from each domain with no access to the rest in Inktomi

Reference:

Greg R. Notess, Review of HotBot(Online), Retrieved April 15, 2004

URL: http://www.searchengineshowdown.com/features/hotbot/review.html