ScienceResearch.com claims to offer value to your research capabilities by returning only relevant results from credible sources, aggregated from the top search engines and ranked by importance. Duplicates listings are not reported and results can be filtered using a unique collections feature. Collections are defined as sources chosen for the value of contributions to science. Categories are used to further narrow the results.
The documentation on scienceresearch.com describes a sophisticated navigation concept to sort results into “topical clusters”, essentially a search within results feature that allows you to go from a general topic to a more specific focus within the results. Search results can be emailed or downloaded directly to a reader for offline reference. It sounds different, but does it deliver as promised?
In order to cut through the advertising pitch and find answers, I compared scienceresearch.com’s search capability to Google, Yahoo and Ask.com and evaluated the results against the advertised value to determine whether there is any tangible difference.
Using the controversial search term “stem cell research” on each search engine produced varied results. Here’s a head-to-head comparison of the value of those search results:
Google returned 4,940,000 results. The first listing was Wikipedia, followed by a legitimate science report from the NIH, a collection of cartoons and images, and several political/religious organization websites. The bottom of the page was reserved for book results. Of all the links on the first page, two were directly related to research.
Ask.com delivered a confusing array of seemingly unrelated sponsored links. Evidently, Sanyo Sterisonic GxP Incubators are on sale. Scrolling down a full screen reveals the first 3 non-sponsored links to be discourses on the religion and politics of stem cell research. Of all the links on the page, 7 were political or religious, 2 were news, and only one was actual research.
Yahoo.com returned similar results to Google, with Wikipedia showing up twice in the results and only 2 legitimate links to research. The rest of the page was devoted to sponsored links, news results and political or religious discourse.
ScienceResearch.com delivered 4,900 results, and 9 of 10 on the first page were legitimate research. The 10th result was a link to a Yahoo news discussion. No advertising or sponsored links cluttered the page, and there were several useful options for sorting.
For sheer focus and usability, ScienceResearch.com wins hands down. The results delivered were legitimate research and little else, and no space was devoted to non-scientific debate, religious views, political discussions or affiliate marketing masquerading as scientific content. ScienceResearch.com was easy to use and returned exactly as promised. Locating the same nine links using the other search engines would involve plowing through countless search pages.