Philip Nel > Weblinks > Search Engines
Search Engines
How to Use Search Engines • General • Meta • Indicies • For Finding People
How to Use Search Engines
General Search Engines
- About.com (a directory backed by Primedia and formerly named the Mining Co.)
- All the Web (backed by Dell)
- AltaVista (developed by Digital, owned by CGMI)
- A9 ("A separately branded and operated subsidiary of Amazon.com")
- Britannica (Encyclopedia Britannica's Internet Guide)
- dmoz (the "open directory project")
- Excite (owned by At Home Corporation. Affiliated with AT&T, Cox, Comcast, & others.)
- Go.com (a subsidiary of ABC/Disney)
- Google! (privately held, backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Sequoia Capital, and Stanford University. Probably the best search engine available, which is why I've linked to it above. Highly recommended.)
- HotBot (a subsidiary of Terra Networks)
- LookSmart (a directory)
- Lycos (a subsidiary of Terra Networks)
- Northern Light (backed by Reuters Group PLC, Hewlett-Packard, and Times Mirror; affiliated with Barnes and Noble, Billboard, and others.)
- OpenHere (a directory)
- Teoma (formerly DirectHit)
- WebCrawler (a subsidiary of Excite, owned by At Home Corporation.)
- Yahoo! (the oldest and largest "search engine" out there, even if it is technically a directory. Recommended.)
"Meta" Search Engines
- Pages that allow you to search more than one search engine, either simultaneously or consecutively.
- Ask Jeeves! (searches multiple engines simultaneously)
- Dogpile (searches many engines at once, but, like Inference Find, doesn't organize its results in as helpful a manner as Metacrawler or Ask Jeeves!)
- Ixquick (meta-search engine)
- LincOn! (formerly Edison! Allows you to search multiple engines, but not simultaneously.)
- Mamma (claims to be the "Mother of All Search Engines")
- Metacrawler (also searches multiple engines simultaneously; a subsidiary of Go2Net)
- Profusion (ditto, but works best if you limit by phrase and not so well if you don't. Privately held, backed by Ford Ventures, Nokia Ventures, River Cities Capital and Chrysalis Ventures.)
- QueryServer (results tend to be erratic)
- Search.com (same again. Owned by CNET.)
- Search Thingy (search multiple engines, but not simultaneously.)
- Vivisimo (meta-search engine that calls itself a "clustering engine"; accurate and interesting organization of results, but unwisely restricts viewing your search results from within the frame)
- The Wayback Machine (does not search current websites; instead, offers "a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form")
Indices
Search Engines for Finding People
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