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Information About Searching |
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Directories |
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Search Engines |
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Portals |
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Meta-Search Sites |
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Discussion Forum Search Sites |
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Yellow Pages |
Information About Searching |
| These sites help you become more expert at searching. |
| Search Engine Watch |
| A source for news, reviews, advice, and statistics about Web search sites. This is the place to compare sites or find a specialty search engine. |
| Bare Bones 101: A Basic Tutorial on Searching the Web |
| A useful tutorial on Web searching created by librarians at the University of South Carolina. Covers different types of search tools, strategies, and advanced search queries. Overviews some of the most popular search sites. |
Directories |
| Directories contain lists of sites, organized in a hierarchy of categories. Because you always choose from a list, they’re easier to use than search engines, and you usually know whether or not you’re getting closer to your goal. Directories are best for finding information about popular subjects, such as recreation, health, news, or entertainment, as well as large organizations such as retail outlets, companies, or governmental agencies. They’re less effective for performing detailed research or finding the site of an obscure institution. |
| Librarian’s Index to the Internet |
| A non-profit Web directory of sites selected by reference librarians for their usefulness to users of public libraries. This directory may be more trustworthy than commercial sites because it does not charge fees for listings. |
Search Engines |
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Search engines are tools for searching huge indexes that keep track of the entire content of many, many web sites and internet archives. You enter the word or phrase you want to search for and see a list of sites--often many more than you want--containing that word or phrase. You can then refine your search criteria and repeat the search in a process of successive approximation. Search engines are fastest for finding a site whose name you know, such as the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. They’re also best for finding sites that are difficult to categorize or sites whose subject matter falls outside the scope of the web directories. Using them is an acquired skill, but once you’re comfortable with searching, you may achieve richer results more quickly. |
| All The Web |
| Uses Yahoo's index and provides easy-to-use tools for narrowing down your search |
| Alta Vista |
| One of the oldest and most extensive engines. Now owned by Overture. |
| Ask Jeeves |
| Originally headquartered in Berkeley, now in Oakland, Ask Jeeves pioneered "natural language" searching. You type questions in plain English, and it directs you to sites providing the best answers. The site may be best with common questions that have simple answers. Probably good at providing facts to assist homework. |
| Google has become the most popular search engine. It pioneered the concept of a popularity engine, which ranks web sites based on how often other sites are linked to them. Google is easy to use, very fast, and accurate. Because it searches only for items containing all the words in a search phrase, it’s especially good for finding multi-word items like “John Wiley Sons.” Frequently the sought-for site is the first item in the list of results. |
| Teoma Search |
| Teoma aims for results that have authority as well as popularity by clustering the results by subject area to help you refine your search. Within each cluster it ranks each site based on the number of same-subject pages that reference it. Thus it ranks the results according to each site's popularity within a specific subject domain. Each result also has a “Related Links” link; once you have found a relevant site, this link lets you search for additional sites that are similar. |
Portals |
| Portals vie to be your choice for your browser’s homepage -- the site your browser goes to as soon as you open it. Most portals hope to be everything to everyone. Besides access to other internet resources via a directory, search engine, or both, they provide news feeds, sports updates, weather reports, shopping links, stock quotes customizable to display your portfolio, and so on and on. Many overstimulate visually, as if they had been designed by moonlighting billboard artists or Santa’s elves in revolt the morning after. |
| Excite |
| Primarily a media extravanganza, with access to chatting, customized stock quotes, news headlines, shopping, etc, etc. The visually overloaded site looks like Billboard Row of the Information Superhighway. Plans to add more pages and access 50% of the web. |
| Go Network |
| Disney-owned. |
| Lycos |
| One of the oldest search engines, Lycos has evolved into a directory and finally into a full-fledged portal, offering many services besides searching. |
| Yahoo |
| This oldest and most visited search site began as a directory but really qualifies as a portal which offers news, email, shopping, a search engine, and other services as well as a directory. Well-organized. |
Meta-Search Sites |
| Meta-search sites send your query to a combination of Internet directories and search engines simultaneously. Because no single search tool covers the entire Web and each has its own strengths, you may, theoretically, be able to perform a more thorough search through one of these sites. They may also let you search things most sites don’t index, such as postings to Usenet newsgroup forums and online dictionaries and encyclopedias. |
| All In One Meta Search | |
| Searches eight different search engines, including All The Web, Altavista, and Yahoo, then clusters results by category and ranks them by popularity. The home page includes a link to a page of specialized search engines, from which you can use engines devoted to news, science, sports, government sites, online encyclopedias, etc. | |
| Ixquick | |
| A sophisticated meta-search engine that simultaneously and quickly searches several engines, then eliminates duplicates. Sites are prioritized by how frequently they appeared among the engines and how highly they were ranked. You can perform advanced searches, for example using Boolean operators and wildcards. Ixquick will send these terms only to the search engines that understand them. This site is recommended for its speed and the relevance of its results. | |
| Mamma.com | |
| The Mother of All Search Engines runs your request simultaneously on several major search engines. |
| Discussion Forum Search Sites |
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The Internet has given rise to tens of thousands of discussion forums on thousands of topics. Email lists and Usenet newsgroups are the two most popular media for online discussion. Email lists work by subscription, usually free. Subscribers contribute by posting email messages to the computer that hosts the list; it forwards the messages to all other subscribers, who can reply to the list or post on a new topic. Newsgroups consist of messages organized by topic. Internet service providers typically subscribe to thousands of these groups. With your Web browser you can display an archive from any available newsgroup and read the sequence of messages on any topic of interest, then if you wish, add your own two cents to the discussion. Nowadays, subscription information about many email lists is available on the World Wide Web, and the content of newsgroup discussions is archived. With your browser you can search for particular topics within newsgroups and even post to them. Several web sites provide access. Caveat: The casual tone of many forums may tempt you to off-the-cuff postings. Remember though, that with many discussions archived, your message may be read by strangers many years hence, when your remarks sound far less clever and penetrating than they do today. It is also widely claimed that people compiling email address lists for spam troll newsgroups. |
| InterPsych |
| This mental health resource has a directory of email conferences and other resources in psychology and mental health. Created by two psychologists in the UK. |
| Topica |
| Hosts discussion groups, email lists, and newsletters on many topics. |
Yellow Pages |
| Several search engine sites let you search a yellow pages directory. Like the printed Yellow Pages, Internet yellow pages let you browse business categories. You can also achieve results the phone book doesn't permit: search for businesses nationally or internationally, list results in order of their distance from a your location, and easily obtain maps and driving directions. |
| Yahoo Local Yellow Pages |
| Specify a location, then use the search engine or browse a directory of categories. |
| Lycos Yellow Pages |
| You can search by category or business name, browse by category, search by distance from a specified address, or search via a map. The same classified index and search tools are also offered at Verizon Superpages.com |
| Mamma.com |
| This meta-search engine also has a yellow pages service. |