Looking For Smut? Want Your XXX Fix? Look Elsewhere ‘Cause Mamma’s Filth-Free & Squeaky Clean
Written: Aug 9, 2003 (Updated Aug 9, 2003)
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You will never hear me call myself a computer expert. Not in this lifetime or any other. I’ve learned the basics of how a computer works, programs that you can use to make surfing the internet easier and the fundamentals of HTML, but I am far from calling myself a computer geek. When I first started using the internet [way back when AOL charged by the hour] I was unaware of the search engine that were in place. I came across Mamma shortly after I started to write at Epinions on a regular basis and was looking for information about a product I saw at the site. Back then, I was impressed with the results that I got when I searched for an item or phrase and used the site often.
It wasn’t until I made a few friends at Epinions that they turned me on to bigger and better engines that gave me thousands of results instead of a handful. A mighty thanks to Sleestakk for showing me “All the Web” and jkkelley for turning me on to “Google”. Thanks to these two guys, I was able to get out of the dark ages of search engines and results and move up to the big leagues. That’s not to say that Mamma is a complete dog, but the advertising rates, search results and overall design of the site could use a major overhaul.
What Is It?
Mamma.com is a search engine that gives you the opportunity to search for information through five channels – the most popular being the web or internet search. From my standpoint the results are accurate but extremely limited. You can also elect to choose to search via news, images, audio and kids. Depending on how you choose to search, your results will vary. Here’s a great example of that; searching for Scooby-Doo you will get the following results:
• Web: 63 • News: 16 • Images: 19 • Audio: 20 • Kids: 9 •
The perk here is that the photos returned from the images search are shown in a thumbnail presentation but aren’t so small that you need to break out the magnifying glass to see them. I was a little disappointed that the kids search only yielded nine returns – you would think that there would be tons of them in that section.
Basic Search Results
I don’t think that the major search engines are in any danger of losing business to Mamma any time soon. You will get results when you search for a word or phrase but not as many as you would if you used Google or All The Web. I used these same key words and phrases on Google … lets see how Mamma stacks up…
"bunny slippers" – 38 results [Google - 10,400]
“edible underwear" – 12 results [Google - 6,060]
"leather fetish" - None [Google - 47,800]
"liquid latex" - 33 results [Google - 26,700]
"red light bulbs" 28 results [Google – 746]
"glow in the dark glasses" – 25 [Google – 79]
"robert deniro, naked" – 6 results [Google – 3]
Seems like Mamma is getting into the censorship game as well. When I did my search for “leather fetish” I received a message that reads “Warning: If you are under 18, or live in an area where it is illegal for you to view explicit content, please revise your search.” I’ve never seen this type of message on a search engine unless it was an engine designed for use by children. I don’t really like my search results filtered for me, if I weren’t looking for something in the adult arena, why would I be typing in “leather fetish”? I can appreciate wanting to give clean results, but no results and a warning seems a bit extreme to me.
Purchasing Advertising
Advertising with Mamma isn’t cheap – especially when you look at the search results. It seems like they are filtering out a lot of stuff from people who aren’t advertising through them – sounds a little like Big Brother and AOL to me. Think I am kidding? Go there and do a search for ‘epinions’ and see how many results you get [I’ll spare you the effort – 1 return]. Average prices of clicks range from .23 cents for automotive, home, health and recreation listings up to $1.00 per click for casinos listings. Now, to defend the system, they do have some nice rules in place for those who choose to advertise through them – such as ‘no click – no pay’ meaning your account is only debited when someone clicks on a link. To prevent any type of fraud, they also protect you from repeat clickers and robotic / automated traffic. Having advertised on other search engine in the past, I can say that the rates are pretty high for what you get but on the same token, you are getting top listings – but overall the results are pretty slim.
Site Navigation
Getting around Mamma is pretty simple, you’ll encounter some lags with results during peak times but for the most part you can expect your results displayed in about five to seven seconds. You’ll get the URL, name of the site, brief description and assorted odds and ends depending on the type of search you are doing. You can type in the word in the search engine and then pick one of the five types of searches but the automatic default is to the ‘web’ search. If you are doing multiple searches of one word – meaning looking up MP3 in all five mini engines – there’s no need to type the word or phrase in over and over. Mamma retains the information entered into the search box so you can pick and choose the search method that best suits your needs.
So, Who Should Use Mamma?
If you want good results but don’t want to be overwhelmed with a plethora of returns for your query, then Mamma would be a good choice for you. But keep in mind that you are getting a limited number of returns and you might not be getting all the information that you want or need. If you are concerned with your child using the internet for information, this would be a good pick but there are a number of great kid-oriented search engines out there. This isn’t to say that some of the XXX links won’t make their way into search results, but they are few and few between. If you type in the word ‘sex’ you’ll get the warning message I mentioned above and be prompted to “continue your search for non-adult results”.
The Bottom Line
Even though Mamma filters out a lot of content, you can get adequate results from submissions. With more than fifty active search engine available, Mamma is at the bottom of the list when I am looking for information. I hate to say that because the site is easy to use and does give accurate returns – but I’d rather sift through a few pages of URL’s than to have a lot of the ‘possible’ matches omitted because people choose not to advertise with them. You have to pay to get listed at the site – or else have a page that gets a lot of traffic. Even Amazon.com – one of the mega sites of online shopping will only pull in a measly 82 results – compare that to 62 million [yes million] that Google can attract and you can see the difference.
As always, thanks for the read!
^V^ Freak ^V^
© 2003 Freak369
Other search engine reviews…
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Recommended:
Yes
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