[ General Search Engines ]

Major Search Engines

Some of the search engines that are popular and are more likely to be better maintained and upgraded than others.

Google
Google, a leading search engine, uses PageRankTM technology to rank pages based on how many other sites link to a site. Users can restrict searches to web pages written in 35 languages, and from over 88 interface languages. What's more, google expands its search into the "deep" or "invisible" web, consists of more than 35 million non-HTML documents, i.e. pdf and other new formats of electronic information. Use Advanced Search to restrict your query to specific domain or file format, or find out who links to your page. Google also offers site search, for instance, narrowing searches within university site such as Nanyang Technology university. Google added video search that searches TV transcripts from C-SPAN adn San Francisco TV stations.

• Google Scholar
  Google Scholar (a beta version) is different from the standard Google Advanced Searches as it searches for scholarly literature from a databases of peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprintes, abstracts and technical reports. Sources come from a variety of undisclosed academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, etc. Find out more from the Google Scholar FAQ put up by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) Libraries.

AlltheWeb
"AlltheWeb indexes billions of web pages, hundreds of millions of multimedia, Audio and FTP files, as well as tens of millions of PDF and MS Word® files". Recommend to use the advanced search to filter results by domain, file format, and media types.

Alta Vista
AltaVista's search technology was debuted as the first full-text Internet search service in 1995. Provides multilingual search with support for 25 languages and multimedia (audio/video/image) search. It is the only major search engine that now offers wild card or truncation. Acquired now by Overture.

AOL Search
A global interactive services provider, offering AOL services in 16 countries in 8 languages. The Company pioneered technologies like Keywords for simple navigation, and the Buddy List to enable instant messaging by showing which of a members' contacts are online.

Ask Jeeves
Ask Jeeves now delivers its search results using Teoma Search technology that employs Subject-Specific PopularitySM approach to generate the most relevant and authoritative results on the Web within specific subject areas. More about Teoma search engine.

HotBot
Wired Digital and Inktomi's HotBot, a unique search engine that is capable of indexing and searching every word on the entire World Wide Web. Powered by Inktomi's advanced parallel-processing engine. HotBot.com, a premier search site in the Terra Lycos network, has launched a personalization feature allowing users to set their own custom search settings right on the HotBot homepage. HotBot users can now customize the Hotbot homepage with their preferences for searching and save these settings, so that each time they return to HotBot their individual settings are in place. The new feature makes it even faster and easier for users to target and execute searches tailored to their style of searching.

Lycos
The Lycos index searches document title, headings, links, and keywords it locates in these documents.

MSN Search
Microsoft's MSN Search is a LookSmart-powered directory of web sites, with the search engines results from Inktomi.

Netscape Search
Netscape Search combines the Open Directory Project with Google to deliver an exceptional Internet search engine experience.

Yahoo
Yahoo is the web's post popular search service, searching Yahoo's category and directory. It is the largest human-compiled guide to the web. Search for news in New York Times, Reuters and Business Week, etc. via the Yahoo! News Directory or find the stocks that fit your investment needs or find out about stock prices and news alert from the Yahoo! Research Center. One of the latest updates is the deployment of its own algorithmic search technology on Yahoo!® Search (http://search.yahoo.com).

• Yahoo! Asia
• Yahoo! Singapore
• My.Yahoo -This site gives you flexibility in personalizing your information and news.

Other Search Engines

Anwers.com
Answers.com is created as a reference search service to provide instant answers on over a million topics. Content is drawn from over 100 authoritative encyclopedias, dictionaries, glossaries and atlases.

Go / Infoseek
Go, owned by Disney, is the former portal site that grew out of the old Infoseek search engine. The search engines results are paid listings provided by GoTo.

WebCrawler
Search engine and web directory. This engine allows search by document title and content. Displays matching categories first. After that come the results from the WebCrawler spider, without descriptions. Easy to use.

WiseNut
Another newcomer to the internet arena, it uses automatically generated categories to sort results. Users can preview individual sites without leaving Wisenut through a feature called , "sneak-a-peek". Acquired recently by Looksmart.

[ Directories & "Channels" ]

Channels are essentially Subject or Topic directories offered by many index search engines to let users browse some of the best Web Sites by topics. Below are some of the search engines that provide "Channels" (or whatever they called their directories):

About Com
About.com, formerly the Mining Company, features over 600 "guides" offering original content in various areas.

FindArticles
FindArticles searches articles from the back issues of over 900 magazines, journals, trade publications and newspapers and also offer a directory view of magazines or featured titles.

Galaxy
Launched in January 1994, Galaxy is the Internet's oldest searchable directory. It was created by a consortium of American technology companies as part of an initiative to develop the tools needed for providing large-scale directory services to support electronic commerce.

Gigablast
A searchable web directory and search engine features over 600,000 topics and over 4 million categorized pages.

HighBeam Research
It is a searchable database of 800 full-text magazines, 150 full-text newpapers, and thousands of books and over 28,000 photos, TV & Radio transcripts, maps. Formally eLibrary, now upgraded and part of High Beam Research which targets at serious business, education and personal research.

Open Directory
A human-powered directory project by DOMZ gives similar directory way of browsing as Yahoo and maintains mainly by volunteers.

 

"Subject Guides" (or "subject clearinghouse").

Many sites maintain a directory of selected "quality" internet sites, subject tree by topics. A few of these subject guides allow you to perform a search indicated by (s). These guides are great launch pads for people who do not have the time to search for general topics, or has limited vocabulary and prefer to browse by subjects via a gateway. Here are a few:



Academic Info : Multidisciplinary (s) ADAM: art, design, architecture and media (s) AERADE : aerospace and defence studies (s) AHDS :arts and humanities data service (s) BIOME : Health & Life Sciences Biogate : biological sciences (s) Biz/Ed :business and ecomomics (s) BUBL :multi-disciplines (s) CAIN :conflict archive.(s) ChemDex: chemistry - Sheffield Chemdex (s) EEVL :engineering ELDIS :development and environment (s) History (s) HUMBUL :humanities (s) INFOLAW (UK) INFOMINE: medical, business, economics, etc. (s)

iLove Languages languages & linguistics LawLinks (UK) Law Librarians' index to the internet : Multidisciplinary (s) Math Forum (s) Philosophy PhysicsWeb : Physics (s) Port :Maritime information (s) PSIgate :Physical Sciences Information Psych Web Psychology (s) RUDI urban design in western culture. (s) SciCentral science (s) SOSIG social science (s) TIPTOP physics (s) HERO (UK) mutli-disciplines (s)

The Yellow Pages
Search for products in the Shopping category, search for information or add you own website to the listing.

WWW Virtual Library
The VL is the oldest catalog of the web, started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of html and the web itself. Unlike commercial catalogs, it is run by a loose confederation of volunteers, who compile pages of key links for particular areas in which they are expert; even though it isn't the biggest index of the web, the VL pages are widely recognised as being amongst the highest-quality guides to particular sections of the web.

 



[ Meta Search ]

Meta Search tools allow users to easily query all the desired search engines simultaneously, using the multi-threaded techniques. Other not so sophisticated ones are the "pseudo-meta searching" tools that offer a collection of search boxes for different search engines or a drop down menu that lets you choose which one among a list of search engines to search. One limitation of meta search engines is their tendency to search superficially. Only approximately 10% of the results from each queried search engine are retrieved and displayed.

A Tutorial by UC Berkeley Library on "Teaching Library Internet Workshops" shares some tips and recommendations of meta search engines.
The list below is arranged alphabetically and not in order of usefulness or popularity.

Beaucoup Search Engines
600++ Search engines by categories

Cicada Search
It searches AltaVista, AllTheWeb, MediSearch and Yahoo search engines simultaneously based on the search terms entered by user. Hits are ranked using Cicada's proprietary RankHit technology.

Copernic
Copernic 2001 Basic gives one-click access to the best search engines on the Internet, such as AltaVista, FAST Search, HotBot, Lycos, MSN Search and Yahoo!. Available for free download.

C|net Search.Com
Only search once for results from over 1,000 search engines, Web directories, auctions, storefronts, news sources, discussion groups, reference sites, and more.. Also offers specialized results from dozens of search engines dedicated to popular topics, e.g. music or travel.

DigiSearch
Multithreaded Search Engine Service

Dogpile
Multi-engine semi-parallel search interface. Searches logically through several search engines until 10 matches are found per engine. Allows use of boolean and proximity operators.

Express Find
Another site providing a collection of different search engines.


Finderseeker
Search by category or country


Hotsheet and Metaplus
Two excellent, compact all-purpose METASEARCH pages

Highway 61
Highway 61 is an experimental meta-search site. Your search is submitted to several well known Web search engines and the results are ranked and then displayed on a single page.

Ixquick
Fast and most comprehensive meta search engine. Searches 14 engines. Results ranked by relevancy and includes information on which search engine it came from. Currently one of the few meta search tools that supports regular searches, natural language searches, and advanced boolean searches, and knows which engines can handle which types of searches. If a page is listed in more than one search engine, Ixquick tells you which engines and how it was ranked.

MegaGo.com
Previously known as Cyber Search Express, MegaGo! is a one click search service using the most popular search terms and keywords.

MetaCrawler
Incorporates results from the top search engines on the Web, collates results, eliminates duplication, scores the results and provides the user with a comprehensive list of relevant sites. MetaCrawler offers a low-bandwidth version, power-search options, and other customizable features. Additional features : an online shopping center; career and directory services

Multimeta
A meta search engines that offers webpage translation services. Its new "mark and search" technique allows you to conveniently search for supplementary info on any word, and any internet page.


ProFusion
ProFusion Search sends your query to multiple search engines at the same time. Search results returned by all search engines are then combined with duplicates removed and relevance factors recalculated.

qbSearch
This meta search lets users display up to 20 result pages at once, all joined together into one long page


Submit It!
Automatic webpage promotion. Registration of websites using Web Promotion Spider in many free search engines and online directories.

Surfwax
Handy sitesnap that provide content summary of any retrieved page. Show statistics of hits retreived by search engine.


The Ultimate Internet Search Index
Contains links and forms to hundreds of search engines. Also search for email, businesses, etc.

Virtual Search Engine
The Virtual Search Engine sites now offers over 1000 fully specialised search engines and tools with easy to use fill-out-forms for searching the World Wide Web, Newsgroups, Listservs, E-Mail Lookups, US & Canada Whitepages plus many specialized information gateways

Vivisimo
This meta search uses document clustering techniques which automatically categorizes textual information into crisp, meaningful, hierarchically sorted category folders.


Webtaxi
The "database dispatcher" gathers search engines by category, while the "supersearch" allows users to use several search engines simultaneously, chosen from the sites listed in these categories: crawlers, indices, Usenet, people, meta searches, articles, software, non-US sites, and miscellaneous unsorted sites.

World Wide Web Search Engines
Gives a list of popular WWW search engines. Compiled by Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee.

 



[ Articles & Guides ]

Search Engines : Evaluation, Comparisons, recommendations and Search Strategies

The Deep Web
A guide by Ulbany University library on the terminology, and sources and tips of searching deep web.

The invisible web
What it is, Why it exists, How to find it, and Its inherent ambiguity - by UC Berkeley Library

The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value
A white paper version of the Brightplanet site, authored by MICHAEL K. BERGMAN

The BEST Search Engines by UC Berkeley - Teaching Library Internet Workshops
This tutorial recommends 4 main search engines with search features tabulated in a table format for easy reference.

Evaluation of Web search engines and the search for better ranking algorithms
A pdf article in citeseer that compares 3 web search engines and how to enhance the ranking algorithms in a web search engine.

How to Choose a Search Engine or Directory(by university of Albany Libraries)
Recommends what search engine to use according to the fields and file types.

The Meta Search Engines: A Web Searcher's Best Friends 
An article reviewing pros &cons and includes classification of meta search engines into 4 categories.


Recommended Search Strategy: Analyze your topic & Search with peripheral vision
A Teaching Library Internet Workshops conducted by UC Berkeley Library with tips on search strategy and matching of search terms to search features. Also provides a chart of recommended search engines.


Search Engine Guide
Provides daily news about search engines and the search engine industry

Search Engine Show Down
A guide to Web searching, compares and evaluates Internet search engines from the searcher's perspective

Search Engine Watch
Covers search engines reviews and ratings

Search Tools Chart (by Infopeople)
Provides a description of each search engine with search features and options in a table format.

Selected Web Search Engines: Search Characteristics
A chart comparing the search characteristics of search engines. Provided by Wolfgram-Memorial-Library

Whats make a good search engine? - by Joe Barker, UC Berkeley Library.
Basically looking at the criteria required to evaluate a search engine.

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