Similarly, it is useful to know how big a page is going to be before going to it. It is a shame that more engines have not incorporated these features. URLs A search engine is only as good as the size of the database it is using. The smaller the database, generally the less useful it is going to be, unless of course it is dealing with a specific subject area in which case it will obviously contain less URLs than a general database. Since this is an article about UK databases, I wanted to make sure that it was possible to limit searches to just the UK, but also if they could be expanded out to Ireland, Europe or the rest of the world.
Advanced search Is there an option to do an advanced search at the site.
Portal Does the site have a variety of other options, such as free email, chat facilities, personalised pages and so on. Number of hits returned This should be expanded out to 'per page'. Most search engines as a default provide you with ten references, and you then have to click to get the next ten and so on. Some do however give you a little more flexibility in formatting the screen according to your own wishes. They both had more features than any of the others and proved to be more flexible and sophisticated in their approach to searching.