Search engines

Meta search engines

Computer programs that search their own huge databases made up of billions of web pages. Robot programs, or crawlers, search the web and compile web sites and pages. There is no human evaluation for quality; it is therefore imperative to evaluate carefully what you select.

These software programs automatically submit your keyword search to several other search tools. They are convenient for relatively simple keyword searches. Just as for the search engines, it is imperative to evaluate carefully what you select

Search engine that ranks web sites by
"popularity", that is, how many other sites link to each page. Excellent for general searches. 8+ billion pages including graphic and PDF. It offers advanced searching,image searching, language tools and specialized searching:
Google scholar
Google local
Google directory
Google Uncle Sam

Launched in 1994, Yahoo is the web's oldest "directory" (the directory still survives). The tabs above the search box allow searching the directory or images. As a search engine, Yahoo uses its own search technology.

Ask.com depends on crawler-based techology to provide results to the queries. The results come from Teoma, a search engine owned by AskJeeves.

Alltheweb is powered by Yahoo. It is more customizable and may seem more geared toward pure searching.

Another large search engine, Altavista has undergone a number of changes since its inception. Its results now come from Yahoo. Many advanced features: image search, audio search, translations, field search...

Hotbot provides easy access to the web's three major search engines: Yahoo, Google and Teoma. It came out in 1996 and is now owned by Lycos.

Oldest search service with a directory, Lycos was launched in 1994. It features custom searches, community guides, image and sound galleries. It is also a good source for web page building. Its results come from Looksmart and Yahoo.

MSN Search now provides access to Yahoo and is developing its own technology. It just redesigned its access page.

This relatively new search engine features some automatically-generated, related searches, known as WiseGuide categories.

Search Engine Colossus offers links to search engines from 217 countries around the world.

These are really two in one. Vivisimo was founded in 2000 by research computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University. Its specialty is to organize results into titled folders. Clusty uses the same principles.

Dogpile

Searches the major search egines - Shows sponsored links.

Surfwax claims to "bring intelligence and efficiency to the Open Web through targeted, multi-source (federated) searching that is seamlessly integrated with practical knowledge tools to save you time and improve productivity."

Mamma calls itself "the mother of all search engines."