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MAJOR SEARCH ENGINES & DIRECTORIES
AllTheWEb/FAST
One of the largest and fastest, but its search options are less
sophisticated than some others. No cached pages. It indexes full Web page,
PDF files, Microsoft Word files,
and text within Flash files.
ALTAVISTA
The oldest crawler-based search engine, it is not as comprehensive or
focused as Google or AllTheWeb. Indexes PDF documents as well as web
pages. No cached pages, but it does have some powerful search features,
some of which are unique. It's Babelfish feature provides automatic
translations among a variety of languages, but only works with non-Roman
alphabet languages if the appropriate font is installed. See Altavista Search
options
DOGPILE
Meta-search engine that will query multiple Web, Usenet, and FTP search
indexes. In custom search mode, the user can choose
specific indexes to be searched. See Search
Dogpile tools &
tips
EZ2WWW
Meta-search engine that gathers results from Open Directory,
Google, AlltheWeb, AltaVista, MSN, Wisenut, and Teoma. There are
separate metasearch engines for searching for news, auctions, downloads,
encyclopedias, forums, images and MP3 files. Advanced search mode includes
over 1,000 topic-specific meta search engines. To help the user expand or
refine a search, ez2www includes links to relevant Open Directory
categories and to clustered results.
GIGABLAST
A newer search engine (July 2002), Gigablast has a relatively
small database, but has some nice features, such as reporting the date a
page was indexed as well as the date the page was last updated. The search
results can be resorted to display by date rather than the default of
relevancy ranking. It also indexes commonly found words ("stop words")
that are ignored by other search engines. See Gigablast
help page
GOOGLE
The pre-eminent search engine, indexing more than 3 billion pages and with
relevance ranking of search results based on linkages and authority. It
provides cached "snapshots" of
each site as it appeared when indexed. If you're looking for a page that
no longer exists, you may still be able to find a copy of it at Google. It
covers web pages, PDF and
Word documents and other formats, but only indexes about the first 100K of
each. Search options not as sophisticated as AltaVista's. Its translation
service is still in the beta mode.
HOTBOT
Relaunched in December 2002, Hotbot offers the choice of searching
Inktomi, Google, FAST, and Teoma using its own advanced searching
capabilities. This isn't meta search. The results from each selected
engine are retrieved in turn, but it does a afford a
way to quickly compare the results of these four search engines
without having to go to their individual home pages. Can be customized,
including the
creation of personal filters. See HotBot
help
IXQUICK
New Meta-search engine that can be searched in Danish, Dutch,
English, English UK, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, Polish,
Portuguese, Swedish and Turkish. The search engines chosen for each
language are supposed to reflect the needs of each language group. You
can specify Web, MP3, newsgroup or
picture searches. Searches Adobe PDF, Gigablast, Netscape, Altavista, Go,
Overture, Ask Jeeves/Teoma, Kanoodle, WiseNut, Avaya DPF, LookSmart,
Yahoo, FindWhat and MSN. The Power Search
Techniques page provides advanced search options.
METACRAWLER
Meta-search engine that searches 6 major search engines from one screen
and returns the results with a combined relevance rating.
See Metacrawler search
tools & tips
SEARCH.COM
Meta-search engine that provides direct access to
About.com,
AltaVista,
Ask Jeeves,
Britannica.com,
Clearinghouse,
Open Directory,
Openfind,
Surf Point,
Teoma,
Thunderstone &
Wisenut. Maintained by C/NET
See Search.com help
VIVISIMO
Meta search engine developed at Carnegie Mellon. It clusters related
documents and provides three options for
viewing search results
but does not rank the documents for relevancy.
Use the advanced search option to customize search and display. It
provides a good overview of a topic but may not be the fastest way to
find a specific answer.
WISENUT
Indexes over 1 1/2 billion webpages in a relatively new database.
It filters out sites that misuse meta tags, which improves
relevance. It measures the relative importance of the pages it finds, the
relevance of the pages within a given search, and the number of links to
the pages and where they're coming from. "Set preferences" allows for
results clustering and other options.
YAHOO!
Older and done with more editorial intervention,
the quality is higher than some other subject guide sites. See
Yahoo search
help. Also
maintains a site geared to children,
Yahooligans, which includes simplified introductions to the Internet.
SPECIALIZED SEARCH ENGINES &
DIRECTORIES
Colleges and Universities
Links to U.S. and Canadian college and university homepages.
Colossus
Large directory of search engines from more than 230 countries,
organized by country or broad topic. Includes links to
both English and foreign language versions.
SCIRUS
A science-specific search engine
Invisible Web
Directory of over 10,000 databases, archives, and search engines that
contain information that traditional search engines have been unable to
access.
Libweb: Library Servers via WWW
UC Berkeley's directory of library websites.
Resource Discovery Network
A collaboration of over sixty educational and research
organisations, including the Natural History Museum and the British
Library, RDN provides access to the "Invisible Web" by selecting,
indexing, describing and linking to pages and pdf/text documents, using
the expertise of specialists from the participating institutions.
Virtual Search Engines
Collection of over a thousand specialized search engines, but the
orientation is popular rather than scholarly and the agressive pop-up
windows for advertising make the site unpleasant to use.
SUBJECT GUIDES
About.com
Subject directory. Each subject page is compiled by
an
expert in
that
subject, but the content is popular rather than scholarly and the
aggressive pop-up ads make the site disagreeable to use. In Sep 2001
About.com closed down 300 of their guide sites. Visit the About.com
Closed Guide Relocation Directory for links to some of these sites
which
have moved to new locations.
BUBL LINK
A professionally-maintained directory of selected Internet resources
covering all academic subject
areas. Each site is evaluated, cataloged and described and the links are
tested monthly.
Hosted by the University of Strathclyde Library in Glasgow.
Infomine
Subject directory to scholarly Internet collections,
developed by the Library of the University of California, Riverside.
InfoPlease
Information Please's almanacs, encyclopedia and
dictionary in searchable form.
MEL: Michigan Electronic Library
University of Michigan's subject directory of "Best of the Internet"
sites selected by librarians.
Scout Report Archives.
Search the archives of thousands of
the prestigious Scout Report reviews of best websites. Also browsable by
subject.
Search Engines and Directories.
Yahoo's annotated hot-linked
list
of search
engines and subject directories.
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