Website of the Week

Find the Best

http://www.findthebest.com/

• Trying to decide what SmartPhone to buy?
• Want to find the best hospital near you?
• Need to feed your new puppy?
• Choosing fantasy football players?
• Going on a trip and need travel tips?
• Comparing wars and death casualties?
• Looking for scholarships?
• Conducting genealogy research? 

This site has something for everybody! The best part is that you are able to compare each item against the rest. This site offers a Smart Rating system (which tells you what is the best, when appropriate), and it’s easy to find out how that Smart Rating system actually determined what is the best.

You can search, or you can browse. And, you are certain to discover something interesting.

FindTheBest is particularly useful when comparing a product or service that isn’t typically available on the same site – take a cell phone plan, for instance. You’ll want to know total cost (including activiation fees, how much data you get, different varieties of plans (e.g. individual, family), and contract types. This site can break it all down for you as if you exhaustively went to each service provider’s site. It allows you to find the service that fits your needs quickly and easily.

http://cell-plans.findthebest.com/

While FindTheBest claims you’ll know everything, you won’t find it all here. There are obvious limits. For instance, I wanted to look at the incomes of individual state employees, but they are limited to certain states. The data is compiled by groups of people, which is why it would be impossible to find it all.

But, when you can find something, you can also create interesting graphs, compare specific products or services of interest side-by-side, and get photos of the items you’re researching. Overall, it’s a research tool that helps visualize the data in a more simplistic and holistic manner.

Review by Lauren McFall, SWC Librarian