Academic and General Subject Directories
Meta Search Engines
Search Engines
Specialized Search Engines
The Invisible Web
Choosing the Best Search Tool
Academic and General Subject
Directories -Subject and academic
directories are often a good starting point to finding quality
information-specific websites. The web-based subject directories
listed below generally provide an organized list of websites grouped
according to specific subject and can often be searched by keyword.
When using keywords, the use of subject-specific terms may yield the best
results. It is important to remember that websites are not
evaluated for content and validity of information, but many are rated based
on the popularity of use. Because it is not possible for every
search engine to provide access to all websites and online information
(see section on the Invisible Web), it is necessary for you to be
able to properly evaluate websites to determine the most accurate
information.
Academic Info -“Academic Info is an online
subject directory of over 25,000 hand-picked educational resources for high
school and college students.” Also offered are links
to current events in the news with an analysis of specific current critical
events.
BUBL Information Service (Academic
Subject Directory) -“Selected Internet resources covering all
academic subject areas.”
Dmoz: Open Directory Project (General
Subject Directory) -“The Open
Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory
of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global
community of volunteer editors.”
INFOMINE (Academic
Directory) -“Scholarly
Internet Resource Collections.”
The Internet
Public Library (General Subject Directory) -“The
Internet Public Library (IPL) is a public service organization and
learning/teaching environment at the University of Michigan School of
Information. They provide library services to Internet users. Activities
include: finding, evaluating, selecting, organizing, describing, and
creating information resources; and direct assistance to individuals.”
Librarians’ Index to the Internet (General Subject Directory) -“Searchable
and annotated subject directory of Internet resources selected and evaluated
by librarians for their usefulness to users.”
LookSmart
Directory (General Subject Directory) -“Where to look
for what you need.”
Meta Search Engines
-Meta-searching is also known as “federated searching” or “cross-database
searching.” Meta search engines will display results from multiple
search engines.You may use a meta search engine to find specific information
and this type of search engine will locate and utilize information found
using results culled from other search engines.
Dogpile -“Dogpile
was built to give users the best search results available on the Web. This
is accomplished by searching all the most popular engines and retrieving
the best combined results.” Dogpile uses a variety of search
engines (including Google,Yahoo!Search, MSN.Search and Ask.com) to get
their results.
Fazzle -“Critically
acclaimed as one of the World's best search engines. Multi-lingual,
Invisible Web, US, Canadian, UK, French, and Dutch regional
searches.”
Ixquick -Ixquick defines itself as “the world’s most
powerful metasearch. Ixquick submits your search
to the major search engines and finds sites that are universally
ranked in the top ten!”
KartOO -“KartOO is a metasearch engine with visual
display interfaces. When you click on OK, KartOO launches the query to a set
of search engines, gathers the results, compiles them and
represents them in a series of interactive maps through a proprietary
algorithm.”
Metacrawler -“MetaCrawler
uses innovative metasearch technology to search the Internet's top search
engines, including Google, Yahoo! Search, MSN Search, Ask Jeeves, About,
MIVA, LookSmart and more. With one single click, MetaCrawler searches the
best results from the combined pool of the world's leading search engines --
instead of results from only one single search engine.”
Queryserver -“Federated
Query Server from Open Text is an advanced meta search tool that broadcasts
a single query across a set of Web-enabled search engines. One query returns
a single merged, ranked and conceptually clustered list - saving you untold
amounts of time and ensuring you'll easily find only the most pertinent
information.”
Search.com -“Search.com
searches Google, Ask.com, LookSmart and dozens of other leading search
engines to bring you the best results.
Surfwax -“Meta-search
engine that provides real-time page summaries - 'site snaps'.”
Turbo10 -“Metasearch
engine, offering results from user chosen groups of search engines.
Search the Deep Net.”
Virtual Learning Resources Center (VLRC)
-“Search a
collection of resources recommended by librarians and educators.”
Webcrawler -“The web’s top
search engines spun together.”
Search Engines
-A search engine is a basic tool which
allows the user to use keyword searching to find indexed, relevant
information on the Internet.
A9.com -“A9.com, which went live on
April 14, 2004, is an Internet Search Engine from Amazon.com. Its results
derive from Windows Live Search, supplemented by Alexa, Amazon.com and other
engines for specific search types.”
AlltheWeb -“AlltheWeb combines
one of the largest and freshest indices with the most powerful search
features that allow anyone to find anything faster than with any other search engine. AlltheWeb's
index (provided by Yahoo!) includes billions of web pages, as well
as tens of millions of PDF and MS Word® files. Yahoo! frequently scans the
entire web to ensure that our content is fresh and to eliminate
broken links. AlltheWeb offers a variety of specialized search tools and
advanced search features, and supports searching in 36 different
languages.”
Altavista -“AltaVista
provides the most comprehensive search experience on the Web!”
Ask.com -Teamed with Teoma.com, “Ask's
ExpertRank algorithm provides relevant search results by identifying the
most authoritative sites on the Web. Our ExpertRank algorithm
goes beyond mere link popularity (which ranks pages based on the sheer
volume of links pointing to a particular page) to determine
popularity among pages considered to be experts on the topic of your search. This is known as subject-specific popularity. Identifying topics
(also known as "clusters"), the experts on those topics, and the
popularity of millions of pages amongst those experts -- at the exact moment
your search query is conducted -- requires many additional calculations
that other search engines do not perform. The result is world-class
relevance that often offers a unique editorial flavor compared to other
search engines.”
Clusty -Formerly Vivisimo.com, “Clusty is a whole
new way to search the web. Clusty queries several top search engines,
combines the results, and generates an ordered list based on comparative
ranking. This "metasearch" approach helps raise the best results to
the top and push search engine spam to the bottom.”
Factbites -“A
cross between a search engine and an encyclopedia. The results return
complete, informative sentences about the search topic.”
Google -Google, which ranks their sites
based on link popularity, offers the user many search options including a
general search, image search (the most comprehensive on the web), Google News,
a search engine of many world news sources, Google maps, which provides
interactive maps and satellite/aerial imagery of the U.S., Google Earth,
offers maps and satellite images for complex or simple regional
searches and several other options to locate the information they need. For
specific academic searches use Google Scholar.
Lycos
WindowsLive
Yahoo! -“Yahoo! Is one of the
world’s most used Internet search tools. You can use Yahoo! to locate
all types of information including news and current events, news photos, stock
quotes, world business and political information and much more.
Specialized Search Engines
-Specialized search engines focus on
locating information in a specific field such as science, literature,
government, etc.
ArtCyclopedia -“The guide to great art on the Internet.”
Internet Scout
Project
Intute -“Intute is a free online service providing you with access to the very best
Web resources for education and research. The service is created by a
network of UK universities and partners. Subject specialists select and
evaluate the websites in our database and write high quality
descriptions of the resources.”
Refdesk.com -“A one-stop site for all things Internet including news, weather, sports,
reference, encyclopedia (50 areas), facts on file, FAQs, tutorials, search
engines, ...”
Search Engine
Colossus -“Use an international directory of search
engines to search the Internet quickly and easily in your choice of
language.”
Scirus -“Scirus is the most comprehensive
science-specific search engine on the Internet. Driven by the latest search
engine technology, Scirus searches over 250 million science-specific Web
pages.”
Science.gov -“Science.gov is a gateway to
authoritative
selected science information provided by U.S. Government agencies including research and development results.”
The Invisible Web
Invisible-web.net -“The invisible web directory.”
Choosing the Best Search Tool
Choose the Best Search Engine for Your
Information Needs
-Use this guide to help find the search engine which might
best fit your information needs.
