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Evaluating
Information

Evaluating
Search Engines

Individual
Search Engines

Media
Locators

Meta-Search
Engines

People Locators

Search
Newsgroups

Search Tips

St. Mary's University Blume Library
Search the Internet


MetaSearch Engines

Dogpile
Dogpile searches "WWW: LookSmart, GoTo.com, Dogpile Web Catalog, Dogpile Open Directory,Direct Hit, About.com, Lycos' Top 5%, InfoSeek, Real Names, AltaVista, Lycos, and Yahoo!. Usenet: Deja.com, Altavista and Deja.com's old Database. FTP: Fast FTP Search. Newscrawler: Thunderstone. Stock Quotes: Quoteserver. Yellow Pages: Infospace. White Pages: Infospace. Maps: Infospace. Weather: Weather Underground." A collection of links organized by subject is also available.

Eureka
A large collection of search engines; standardizes terminology used for different search engines. Must be search individually but this is a great place to start locating various search engines.

Ixquick
Submits your search to many search engines: Altavista, AOL,Open Directory, Excite, Fast Search, Google, Goto, Hotbot, Infoseek, Lycos, MSN, Northern Light, Webcrawler, and Yahoo. Search results are ranked for relevancy.

MetaCrawler
searches 9 databases including Lycos, Infoseek, WebCrawler, Excite, AltaVista, Thunderstone, The Mining Co., Looksmart, and Yahoo. Many complex search options available including AND, OR, and NEAR operators, and ability to set precision of search. Also has an organized list of links by subject. I really like this one.

Search.com
searches with dozens of search engines divided into categories: Web indexes & directories, Usenet, people finders, software, reference, entertainment, and technical reports. Searches using AND, OR and phrases can be used. Also includes a section on specialty searches such as domain names, different languages, email addresses, etc.


Individual Search Engines or Portals

Mining.com
More than 500 subject guides with actual human beings in charge of each category, keeping this Internet portal current and useful.

All the Web (FAST Search)
Searches over 200 million documents. Use + before a word that must appear in the documents, - before a word that must not appear, and "" for a phrase.

AltaVista
searches Web and Usenet, lists 30 million URLs, lowercase searches are not case sensitive, but uppercase searches are, OR is the default with multiterm searches, to search a phrase put it in quotes, using a + sign means AND, using - sign means NOT. Also a portal.

Ask.com
combines natural language searching with a proprietary knowledge base of materials on the Internet

Disinformation
database of more than 30 million Web documents, with rated and reviewed results appearing first.

Excite
searches Web, Usenet news, Usenet classifieds, and Excite reviews, lists 50 million URLs, OR is the default in multiterm searches but you can use AND, OR, and AND NOT between terms for a complex search, and you can weight some keywords more heavily by putting a ^ and a numerical value after the word.

Go.com
formerly Infoseek, searches Web and Usenet, company directory listings, email addresses, timely news, Web FAQs, and Infoseek select sites, lists 1.5 million URLs, use a + for AND, a - for NOT, put phrases in quotes, the default search for a multiterm search is AND.

Google
Designed at Stanford University, this website searches about 25 million web pages. Ranks relevant websites based on the number of links to a webpage.

Librarians' Internet Index
Selected Internet resources annotated and organized by librarians.

Lycos
search the Web, also separate listings for sounds, pictures and subjects through the A2Z catalog, lists 66 million URLs, use - sign for NOT, a $ sign for a wildcard, and a . after a word for an exact match.

MSN.com
Microsoft's portal to the Internet with its own encyclopedia: Encarta Online.

Netscape Netcenter
Netscape's portal to the Internet

Northern Light
"dynamically organizes search results, creating folders of documents with similar subjects, sources, or types." Click on a folder and the results of your search in only that folder will be displayed. Helps narrow large searches.

100 Hot Web Sites
lists the top 100 web sites excluding adult sites. A nice site for browsing but not the best for searching.

WebCrawler
search for Web content, lists 2 million URLs, default for multiterm searches is OR, can use AND, OR, NOT, NEAR, ADJ and put phrases in quotes.

Yahoo!
searches Web and Usenet content and email, lists 370,000 URLs, default for multiterm search is AND, use the OPTIONS button for a multiterm search with AND and OR, substrings, and other filters. Use the Yahoo subject categories for general subject information.


People & Business Locators

Anywho
search for people, businesses, websites, tollfree numbers, and do reverse look-up

Bigfoot
an email address finder with a simple interface and an alias feature that lets you keep a stable email address regardless of service provider.

InfoSpace
Yellow pages, white pages, background checks, etc.

Info USA
Search for personal phone numbers or do a reverse search for name by phone number

Internet @ddress.finder
especially good for university, AOL, and Compuserv addresses but with fewer search filters. Can also search for a the name if the you know his/her email address.

MSN Maps and Directions
input any U.S. street address and this page will show you a map of the location with street names (U.S. and Canada addresses only).

Switchboard
personal and business telephone and mailing-address finder with city and state filters.

Yellow Book
search for people, businesses, government home pages; toll free directory also.

Yahoo! People
an email and telephone number search engine with filters that let you narrow your search (for example, by high school or college).

Zip 2
search for businesses by category or name with filters for state and city.

Media Search Engines

Alta Vista Image Finder

Alta Vista MP3/Audio Finder

Alta Vista Video Finder

Fast Multimedia Search

Google Images

Yahoo Picture Gallery


Newsgroups & Usenet Search Engines

Google News Groups
complex query options and over 20,000 newsgroups. Best results are usually obtained with this search engine since it was designed to search newsgroups. You can sign up with Google Groups to read and post to newsgroups.


Tips for Searching the Internet

Spider's Apprentice: How to Use Web Search Engines
tips on searching the web, planning search strategies, and how search engines work.


Evaluating Search Engines

General Internet Resource Finding Tools: A Review and List of Those Used to Build INFOMINE Web
ratings of many search engines.

Internet Search Tool Details
descriptions of many search engines

Search Engine Watch
comprehensive charts of features, tips on searching, how search engines work and much more.

Search Engines on the World Wide Web
list and analysis of available web search engines

Search Page
directory or hot list for people who want to search the Internet and World Wide Web for something but don't know where to start; also lists reviews of search engines.

Spiders and Worms and Crawlers, Oh My: Searching on the World Wide Web
capsule reviews of various search engines.


Evaluating Information Resources

Evaluating Quality on the Net
a discussion of critically evaluating sites on the Internet with examples.


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Created 8/1/96. This page was last updated:
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