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| Tools for searching the Web General Search Engines |
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[ Singapore Search Engines | Directories & Channels | Meta Search | Articles & Guides ] go to [ Subject Guides Main Menu ] |
[ General 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.
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).
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:
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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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