Opinion, Forum, and Usenet Search Engines

Searchable Usenet newsgroup archives (now more commonly known simply as discussions or forums) offer several important sources of information that may not be found elsewhere on the Web. Use for finding information on individuals, personal product experiences, competitive intelligence, product technical support, and breaking news. However, all but Deja.com have disappeared. For personal opinions about products and individual product reviews, some of these newer online opinion and rating services can be quite useful.

BoardReader is a search engine that just searches Web-based discussion forums. These online discussion forums are often not indexed by other search engines. BoardReader accepts phrase searching and truncation with an asterisk. Their results include a cached copy, the date, and the number of replies.

NOTE! On Feb. 12, 2001, Deja.com died. Google has bought the domain names and database and has a searchable database of Usenet postings from Aug. 2000 to the present, but no posting, browsing, or advanced search capabilities. Stay tuned for a full review or see the Google Groups site, their press release, or Google Groups Usenet Help file for more details.

Search Engine	Default	Boolean	Phrase	Proximity	Truncation
Google Groups	AND	OR -	"Yes"	None	None
Deja.com     Review	AND	&, |, &!	"Yes"	^ for NEAR	Yes, * ?
Epinions	OR	None	No	None	Automatic
RateItAll	AND	None	No	None	Yes, *
ConsumerReview	OR	+, -	"Yes"	None	Yes, *

Tips for using DejaNews:

1. Use Power Search for full archive
2. Full Boolean available
3. Phrase searching and truncation may be incomplete
4. Can post and read newsgroups
5. Most comprehensive Usenet archive

AltaVista's Usenet database appears to have become unavailable, even at the international mirrors when AltaVista switched to RemarQ in Oct. 1999. As of August 2000, RemarQ and AltaVista's Usenet databases are gone. Another option in the past, Reference.com used to be useful for current awareness functions but is also now defunct.

See my article "DejaNews and Other Usenet Search Tools" for more about searching.