Users can search for web pages, Usenet posts and recent news stories from Reuters in plain English or by keywords. Additional features include a catalog of reviewed sites, Newstracker to help you keep on top of your news, a talk room , and city.net with guides to over 4,000 destinations worldwide. It is perhaps the largest web index and lists over 35 million documents. The HotBot user interface supports basic searching features, such as Boolean operators with nesting. Good navigational aids.
Large images slow down access and waste screen space.
Interface is somewhat busy and overly fashionable. Magellan bills itself as an Internet guide, and this is where its strengths lie. It offers the options of searching sites it has rated and reviewed, or its entire database. Within the reviewed sites, users can opt to only search for green light sites, which are those determined to have no adult content. Users can also browse Magellan starting with such topics as daily living and spirituality .