General Purpose Search Engines & Directories
Alta-Vista
Alta-Vista is one of the most comprehensive search engines, featuring blazing speed, results that can be selectively refined, and a search for documents in specific languages. http:///www.altavista.comExcite
Excite goes beyond keyword search and tries to understand underlying
concepts. Results can be sorted by Web site; prompts with keyword list
to help refine searches. http://www.excite.com
Google!
Yet another search engine born at Stanford (so were Yahoo and Excite), Google ranks results both on how many links point to a page (importance) and search phrase matching. http://www.google.com/HotBot
HotBot uses parallel processing technology to index Web documents. Its flexible search interface can limit searches by date, domain, or media. http://www.hotbot.comInfomine
Infomine might be called an "academic" search engine,
focusing on scholarly resource collections, electronic journals & books,
online library card catalogs, and directories of researchers. http://lib-www.ucr.edu/
Infoseek
Infoseek is perhaps the best at handling plain-language
queries. It clusters results from a single site, offering suggestions for
related topics. http://infoseek.go.com/
LookSmart
This Web directory with more than 18,000 subjects is rapidly rising in popularity according to Media Metrix and Relevant Knowledge usage ratings. http://www.looksmart.com/Lycos
Lycos offers many features beyond searching the Web.
Uses "LiveWire" agent technology to rank sites, then allows you to vote
on the usefulness of results. http://www.lycos.com
Webcrawler
Webcrawler is Excite's "little brother," useful
but by far the smallest of the major search engines, with only 2 million
pages indexed. http://webcrawler.com/
Yahoo!
The most popular Web directory. Its directory format
makes subject search easy. Also offers specialized searches for timely
news, stock quotes, classifieds, etc. http://www.yahoo.com
Search Engine Directories
Beaucoup!
Very much indeed: more than 1,200 listings of engines,
directories, and subject indices around the world. http://www.beaucoup.com/index.html
Meta Search Engines
Ask Jeeves
Ask Jeeves a question using natural language, and
you'll likely get an accurate answer from its database of more than 7 million
questions, with links to what you're seeking. http://www.askjeeves.com
Chubba
Chubba searches whatUseek, Yahoo!, AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek, Hot Bot, and Lycos all from a single search query. http://www.chubba.com/
Dogpile
Dogpile searches the major search sites, then gives
you the option to continue searching Usenet Newsgroup archives, software
archives or current news wire stories. http://www.dogpile.com/
Mamma
Mamma is a meta search engine that
analyzes your queries and properl formats the words and syntax for each
of the major search engines it probes. http://www.mamma.com/
MetaCrawler
Metacrawler sends your query to several search engines,
organizes the results in a uniform, "voted" ordering format, then displays
the results in a single list, eliminating duplicates. http://www.go2net.com/search.html
Specialized Search Engines & Directories
Digital Librarian
Margaret Vail Anderson maintains this librarian's
choice of the best of the Web, with thousands of links in dozens of categories.
http://www.servtech.com/~mvail/home.html
Hot News / Hot Research
This unique resource compiles an extensive annotated
directory of informational sites relating to a single important news story,
providing very deep coverage. http://www.poynter.org/research/reshotres.htm
Infomine
Infomine might be called an "academic" search engine,
focusing on scholarly resource collections, electronic journals & books,
online library card catalogs, and directories of researchers. http://infomine.ucr.edu/Main.html
Librarians' Index To The Internet
This searchable annotated directory of Web resources,
maintained by Carole Leita, is organized into "best of," "directories,"
"databases," and "specific resources." Each entry also includes linked
cross-references, making it a browser's delight. http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/InternetIndex/
List of Lists
Gary Price's extensive directory of Web pages that
present information in the form of rankings of different people, organizations,
companies, etc. http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gprice/listof.htm
Liszt, the mailing list directory
Liszt is a searchable directory of more than 84,000
lists. A Liszt search returns names, descriptions and subscription information
for mailing lists rather than archived postings. http://www.liszt.com/
Searchable Bibliographies & Major Library Catalogs
Direct links to hundreds of bibliographic resources, many of which are invisible to search engines. http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gprice/bibs.htmSpeech and Transcript Center
A huge directory of links to a wide range of recorded
speeches and transcripts, from politicians, businessmen, and other famous
people. http://gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~gprice/speech.htm
Starting Page
Starting Page is designed to be a fast loading start
page to the top 2,000 sites on the Web, including easy access to all major
search engines and directories. http://www.startpage.com/
Theinfo.com
Search specialized topics, such as news, movies,
and recipes, or compare prices and availability at online stores. http://www.theinfo.com/
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