At the same time, with interest rates so low, finding the most comprehensive and objective list of savings rates is more important than ever. It’s also trickier than ever. A Google search for “high savings rate” brings up links to supposed offerings of “up to 3.5% APY,” just one example of the bait-and-switch tactics many Web sites employ to get commissions from banks for drawing users to their sites. Similar behind-the-scenes advertising deals can make determining which listings generate revenue and which do not to be a challenge. It also can be hard to know which banks are legit.

Even more, just searching through the sheer number of sites listing savings rates can be daunting. New sites and blogs pop up every day, claiming to be the best source for savings account and C.D. deals. “There are a lot more options out there than there were even a couple years ago,” says Jim Bruene, founder and editor of Online Banking Report, an industry newsletter. So with some initial guidance from Mr. Bruene, we set out on a non-scientific journey to find which Web sites delivered the best lists of saving rates available and which provided the most user-friendly searching experiences.

We assumed we had $10,000 to save in either a savings account or a six-month certificate of deposit and we compared offerings based on their A.P.Y., or annual percentage yield. We tried to find national rates without certain stipulations, like 30-day offerings, where possible and when we had to choose local regions, we checked offerings for New York and Kentucky, for comparison purposes.

The winners in terms of bringing up the most comprehensive, non-confusing rates were, not surprisingly (Mr. Bruene predicted this), the old faithfuls Bankrate.com and MoneyRates.com. But finding the highest rates at those sites required a few extra clicks, and not getting fooled by sponsored links.

At both sites, only those banks that advertised had links to their Web sites in their listing. So, to contact the bank with the highest rate — to confirm the rate or even open an account — often requires a new search to find that bank’s Web site. All of the sites we checked also brought up rates that were well above the national averages. According to Bankrate.com, the weekly national average rate for a minimum deposit 6-month C.D. was 0.58 percent as of Oct. 28, while it was 0.44 percent for a $10,000 money market deposit account. More of our findings are below.