Internet Search Engines

Where to Start ?

Simple Search Engines (Indexing full document content, more or less):

• Alta Vista - Simple search with best match methods, advanced search with exact match/Boolean methods. Searches in the following fields: URL, host name, page title, publication period, or linking/citing pages. Use language restriction.
  
  
• AlltheWeb - Offers Web news pictures, videos, audio, FTP files in many languages. Advanced search allows customizing results.
  
  
• Excite (Architext) - Concept searching and keyword searching with best match method. Search Wizard presents related terms. Results grouped by relevance score or site.
  
  
• FreewebCentral - Search by subject categories. Links to more than two dozen other search engines.
  
  
• Go/Infoseek - Searches Usenet news groups, news, images. Promises fast indexing of added URL's. Best match system with relevance ranking using, Boolean operators and phrase searching.
  
  
• Google! - Highly recommended by Search Engine Watch (April 2003). Page ranking according to the number and importance of citing pages, which can be displayed.
  
  
• Google Scholar
  
  
• HotBot - Provides Open Directory. Searches Web pages, Usenet News. Limitation by date, some document types and domain possible. Allows saving of settings on the HotBot server. Possible to look up pages citing a given URL.
  
  
• LookSmart - Browsable/searchable subject structure of Web resources. Selectivity, professionally written abstracts. Put together your own selection of favorite web sites from five categories. Access full-text articles from hundreds of magazines and journals.
  
  
• Lycos - Directory from the Open Directory project; index from Fast Search. Searches Web, Gopher, FTP, binary files, images, sounds.
  
  
• WebCrawler - Search the Web and other protocols. Find similar pages. "Shortcuts" to related site reviews and additional services.
  
  
• Yahoo - Browsable/searchable subject structure of Web resources.
  
  

Meta Search Engines (Utilizing several "simple" search engines):

• Ask Jeeves - Formulates questions related to the query, chooses the one that matches your information needs, and takes you to the answer. Presents the first ten hits of each search, in addition to the questions.
  
  
• Dogpile - Uses 23 search services for Web, Usenet and ftp documents. Starts searching individual services in groups of three, starting with Web directories. You may choose from various options in the customized or advanced search form.
  
  
• ez2www - Results displayed partly in categories, with clustered result sets based on concepts represented in the pages. You may use individual search engines. Search countries (news feeds, weather) and large directory.
  
  
• Fusion - Uses a small search window (Java). Integrated results, listed based on their ranking in the search engines employed. Shows only title/URL. Use of AND supports phrase searching within quotes.
  
  
• Inference Find - Offers result merging, duplicate removal, result clustering.
  
  
• MetaCrawler - Integrated result. Regional and organizational limits possible. Sorting options, some post-processing (duplicate removal, link checking).
  
  
• MetaFind - Searches the six largest Web search services, displaying a different number of hits from each. Sorting of the results by domain, keywords in the title, and alphabetically.
  
  
• ProFusion - Integrated result with relevance factors recalculated. Options: automatically selects the best three search engines, broken link detection, personalized search service.
  
  
• SavvySearch - May submit searches to up to twenty search engines in parallel, chosen according to "expert options." Integrated or separated result list possible. Interface in many languages.