I’m always getting questions about which site has the best search capabilities in the IT industry.  For my money, the answer is Sun.com. Here’s why.

Sun's redesigned search pages still deliver an industry best practice. Detailed content category, type, format and language filters make navigating results a snap

Sun.com’s search design is very effective for delivering mountains of organized and logical search results because it sorts and presents information  based on common categories as well as resource type or affiliation.  Each category-specific page clearly indicates the number of results found within the category — and each list opens to display additional subcategories.

The “Search Help” link leads to useful, instructive information that is designed to help visitors construct a search that will yield the most relevant results. This page also includes several search hints designed to assist visitors in entering the most accurate key words or phrases that will yield the results they require.

Best of all, Sun.com offers an advanced site search feature under the “More Options” link that provides users with some truly unique capabilities. Users can specify that returned pages meet specific file format criteria (.PDF, XML, Text, HTML), and can also specify content written in up to 13 different languages.