Here are some of the things we can see at a glance are common features of websites associated with the phrase "best website":
-The site has a 'wrapper' (this is an html code component) that enables the page content to be centered in the viewer's browser, with a solid-color or simply-decorated margin on each side.
Example: www.ecyclebest.com
-The site's main navigation bar goes across the top of the page rather than down the side.
Example: www.whps.org
-Images are used, but not overused.
Example: www.nothingbutnets.net
This search shows off both the advantages and disadvantages of image search engines: on the one hand, it is easy to survey your results because it is typically practical to display the whole result (even if the image is only a thumbnail), whereas with text-based results some kind of record generally substitutes for the actual result on the results landing page. On the other hand, image search engines still have a lot of constraints--for my project I still had to use text to return image results (although to be fair if I had a relevant image I could have used it as a search starter on Google Image search), and the search engine was still matching text to text (search text to text associated with the images returned) rather than actually matching text to image. Moreover, this specific search engine has a couple of further issues: first, it is not at all clear to the user how or why a result is associated with the textual search terms, instead the search process is basically a black box. Second, although there are many tools available for refining a completed search (limiting by color, image size, etc.), the actual search is very basic--simple keyword or phrase with no field searching or controlled vocabulary. Thus, an image search on a free search engine like Google Images can be a useful supplement to searches for other data formats in other databases, but the results must be interpreted cautiously, with an awareness of the limitations of the database being used.
