Al Jazeera English
Al Jazeera English Website: http://english.aljazeera.net/
The Search Service Evaluation of a internet search service I was assign to is the news channel Al Jazeera English, the sister channel of the Arabic-language Al Jazeera. My assignment is to evaluate Al Jazeera English website. As Professor Sheila Booth categorize, it is a news service site. On it’s website, in the Corporate profile of the “ABOUT US” directory of the website is where they stated their goals and purpose as they state they are a “24-hour English-language news and current affairs channel, is headquartered in Doha, the capital of Qatar. The organization is the world's first global English language news channel to be headquartered in the Middle East”. They also want to be the English-language channel for all Middle Eastern events, in which they will reporting news from developing countries in the Middle-East to the United States and the rest of the western world. Also, they may be mostly a news channel, but they also cover other things related like current affairs, features, analysis, documentaries, live debates, entertainment, business and sport.
In terms of the interface of the website, I would have to say simple but very organized and straight to the point. The text, graphics and page layout made very easy environment for visitor to get what they’re looking for in terms of news. They can navigate which parts of the world they want news about whether it be Africa, America, Asia, Europe and of course the Middle East. It also has videos of currents news and also a section where they called it “FOCUS” in which they upload news of utmost importance. They also indicated when the website was recently updated and web feed format through Really Simple Syndication (RSS).
The search engine of the service is very basic. It only use keywords with options of “exact phase” or “any of”. I did search queries of Uganda and Chile as Al Jazeera English had the current news based in those two countries. I was looking for the landslide in Uganda and the earthquake in Chile. They way the results come up is by most recent. The search engine is primitive compare to Google or Yahoo as I’ve gotten more relative results as it show article from all news organization not just what information is on its website.
Even though the search engine is obsolete, the Al Jazeera English is one of a kind. It aims to give a global perspective to the world of the Middle East. It is also very unique in which it has a directory of blogs of different countries all around the world. The blog are of reporters in the “field” of the countries in which they are reporting news about, which makes for a fresh perspective.
This service, though very informational about developing countries and unique in it’s own right did not help in improving in my understanding of internet searching. It didn’t help me because I already have a solid understanding of search services. With that said, I believe web search engine like Google is better than Al Jazeera English search engine because I can get more relevant hits on Google news about the middle east than on Al Jazeera English because it is not a deep or invisible web. I believe that search engines like Google is great for all searching queries ninety-nine percent of the time. The only time I think web search engine should not be use is specific search in which databases and catalogs would provide the best resources.. For example, if I was looking for specific informational resources on academics in would look in Infomine or if I was researching law I would use Westlaw online legal research database. Simply put, web search engine is great for almost everything, but deep web is better for specific research.