Altavista

• indexes resources worldwide

• only returns up to 1000 hits whatever it pretends

• only indexes up to 600 objects per web site

• is secretive about what it chooses to ignore

• doesn't recompile its indexes often

• is remotely accessed

• ranks responses by relevance

• indexes all of text

Harvest

• indexes resources within region indexed

• returns up to 1000 hits

• allows all of web site's resources to be indexed

• permits local control on what is indexed

• can be set to recompile its indexes often

• can be locally accessed

• doesn't rank responses by relevance by default

• indexes summary of text