- All the Web (Fast Search)
- When you select All of the word s in the Search for box,
typing a word indicates that the word must exist in document;
-word indicates that the word must not exist in document; and
word1 word2 indicates that the exact phrase must exist in document.
When you select Any of the word s in the Search for box,
typing a word indicates that the word word may exist in a document;
+word indicates that the word must exist in a document;
-word indictes that the word must not exist in a document;
and word1 word2 indicates that the exact phrase may exist in a
document. More help!
- AltaVista
- Put important key words or phrases inside quotes such as "auburn tiger". Excite also uses the + and - signs as things to include (+) and things to exclude (-). Do not put any spaces between the + or - sign and the word to which it applies. Boolean absolute limits (AND, OR, AND NOT). One of the largest and most comprehensive search engines available, it searches the entire HTML document and also gives the option for searching Usenet. More help: Getting started or Power searching
- Ask Jeeves
- Excellent for general questions. A good staring point for most searches, but not for specific information, Web pages, or companies. Frame your question carefully. Look over all the results provided before exploring the individual links. Jeeves doesn't rank them according to relevancy and the most relevant link is just as likely to be at the bottom as at the top of the page. AskJeeves searches its own database, and that of AltaVista, Infoseek, Excite, Yahoo, and Webcrawler. While it only lists the top few from each of these, you are bound to find at least one page of highly relevant information. More help!
- Dogpile
- Search up to 25 engines at the same time. WWW: LookSmart, Thunderstone, GoTo.com, Yahoo!, Dogpile Open Directory, About.com, Lycos' Top 5%, InfoSeek, Direct Hit, Lycos, and AltaVista; Usenet: Dejanews, AltaVista and Dejanews' old Database; FTP: FTP Search; News Wires: Yahoo News Headlines, and Infoseek News Wires; Stock Quotes: Quoteserver; Yellow Pages: Infospace; White Pages: Infospace; Maps: Infospace; and Weather: Weather Underground. Accepts quotation marks to indicate phrases, as well as the Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT and NEAR. Search statements are translated into a form that's acceptable to search engines not supporting Boolean operators. Items retrieved from each search engine are presented together. At the start of the results list from each engine, the number of items found by that engine is displayed. In addition, your query (in the form presented by Dogpile) is shown. You can choose the order in which Dogpile accesses search engines in its Custom Search feature. You can also opt to skip any engines that you don't want Dogpile to search. More help!
- Excite
- Put important key words or phrases inside quotes such as "auburn tiger". Excite also uses the + and - signs as things to include (+) and things to exclude (-). Do not put any spaces between the + or - sign and the word to which it applies. Boolean absolute limits (AND, OR, AND NOT) also apply as they also do in AltaVista. The feature "More Like This" can be helpful in narrowing down the search; "Channels" have news and reviews of other sites. More help: Getting started or Power searching.
- Google!
- For most searches, simply enter your search words or phrase in the search box. If you type in more than one word, Google! searches for the phrase first, and then the individual words. The system automatically assumes that you require each item to include all your search terms. Google searches only for the form of the word you enter. (It won't automatically search for plurals, past tense, etc.) Also allows specialized searching: Stanford Search-Search Google's database of Stanford-related and Stanford-hosted pages; Linux Search-Search Google's database of Linux-related pages; and Government Search-Search Google's database of U.S. Government-hosted pages (.MIL and .GOV sites). More help!
- HotBot
- Some unique search features make this a very useful search engine, including sorting results by date or media type. Two optional buttons for simplify and modify are available. Modify narrows the search for more accurate results. It allows specifying phrase searching or you can use quotation marks around a phrase. A "must not" button eliminates a term. A "should" selection tells the search engine to place more emphasis on that term. Boolean searches are supported only through the pop-up options. Case is insensitive except the very rare instance of mixed case within the same name. Date searching gives an option of all in the database, options for documents older or newer than a specified date, or content posted within the last few days or months. You may search by .edu to get educational institutions or .uk to get United Kingdom or by actual domain name of a specific Web site (www.hotbot.com). More help: Getting started or Power searching.
- Infoseek (GO Network)
- Searches the Web, Infoseek Select sites, Usenet newsgroups, company directory, and timely news. Once you have selected a main topic, you can narrow the search before you use the search index by selecting a subtopic. Boolean or is the default, but Infoseek allows variations of and, not, adjacent, and near. Search for phrases by enclosing in quotation marks ("). A hyphen (-) between words locates those within one word of each other. Brackets around words will retrieve words within 100 words in any order. Use a + (plus sign) to ensure inclusion of a word or phrase and a - (minus sign) sign to exclude a word or phrase. Searches are case sensitive; capitalize proper names and insert a comma between different names. As a directory, it has created 15 well-organized, comprehensive, channels covering broad subject areas (e.g. computers, business, entertainment, health, real estate). The various channel pages contain links to sites providing the most commonly desired information in a field, for example, sports statistics, restaurant reviews and job listing classifieds. More help: Getting started or Power searching.
- Lycos
- One of the oldest search tools on the Internet, but keeping up-to-date with a variety of result options available. The Boolean operator and is the default. (Enter multiple words separated by spaces.) The advanced interface allows the searcher to specify and, or, not between words. Using a minus sign (-) before a term eliminates it from the search. Using a plus sign (+) ensures it will be included. For relationships between words use adj, near, far, or before. More help: Getting started and Power searching.
- Magellan
- Assumes you mean OR when you enter multiple keywords and ignores simple words like "the," "that," "for," and "in". You can exclude words by placing a minus sign before them. The pages with more occurrences of your keyword are ranked higher. A green dot appears next to sites that are certified "family safe" -- i.e. contain no adult topics or content. More help.
- MetaCrawler (GO2Net)
- Accesses AltaVista, Infoseek, Excite, Thunderstone, The Mining Company, Webcrawler, Lycos, Yahoo, and LookSmart. The main search box in offers three choices, any (to search for any of the words), all (to search for all the words) the phrase (to search for the phrase). In addition, you can use the plus and minus signs to require or exclude keywords, and quotation marks to indicate a phrase. The Power Search menu gives you the option of restricting your results by continent and by three U.S. site domains (educational, commercial, and governmental). More help: Getting started and Power search.
- Northern Light
- In searching the default word is AND between words. Boolean terms or and not may be inserted between words or phrases in quotes. Phrase searching requires quotation marks around each phrase. Truncation is automatic. You may use an asterisk (*) but plurals will be searched with entry of singular words. A % (percent)sign can represent a single character either internally or at the end of a word after a minimum of four characters. A + (plus) sign before a word or phrase in quotes indicates must include; a - (minus)sign is an eliminate-entirely situation. One of the newest with good, extensive content and a feature for classification of hits by division into custom search folders. More help: Getting started and Power searching.
- ProFusion
- From the University of Kansas merges the best hits from the best search engines for the best results. Customizes the search engines chosen for individual queries filters results to remove duplicates and broken links, provides selective updates. It will run regular queries for you and tell you when there are new results. ProFusion Lets you choose the three best engines based on your query, the three fastest engines, or all the engines. ProFusion supports several different search modes. The All button is the same as using AND between each of the words in the query, limiting your search to sites that contain all the words being searched. The Any button is the same as using an OR between each of the words in the query and will select sites that contain one or more of the search terms selected. Boolean and Phrase searches are also supported. In addition to Intelligent Search, you may submit your query in an OnTarget Search category. ProFusion OnTarget Search delivers results only from web sites relevant to the chosen category. More help!
- SavvySearch
- Accesses Lycos, WebCrawler, Google!, All The Web, Thunderstone, Infoseek, DirectHit, HotBot, Excite, Galaxy, AltaVista and NationalDirectory. Results from four or five engines are given at one time. Supports quotation marks to designate a phrase, the plus (+) and minus (-) signs to require or exclude words, the Boolean AND, OR, NOT operators, and using parentheses in Boolean statements. Each resulting item includes the title, the engine or engines from which it was retrieved, a description, and the url. The lack of a date or indication as to size can be a drawback. More help!.
- Snap
- For a general subject (e.g. "jobs"), type the word or words in the search box, click the search button, and Snap will search its entire collection of hand-picked sites for those that contain words from your query. You can get better results by entering very specific information into the search box using one of three methods to refine your search: Exact Phrase (quotes [" "] around terms to require that the entire phrase be found ; Required Words (plus sign [+] before a word to require that it be found); and Excluded Words (minus sign [-] before a word to require that it not be found).
The Search for menu lists different options for finding information. The following options are available for defining your search: Select All the words to find documents containing all of the words you enter. Select Any of the words to find documents containing one or more of the words you enter. Select The exact phrase to find documents with the words you enter, together, in the specific order you enter them. Select The page title to find documents whose titles contain at least one of the words you enter. More help: Getting started or Power searching
- WebCrawler
- One of the best for identifying major Web resources or most relevant sites for mainstream resources. It may be a good place to start for those new to keyword searching with full-text indexing. WebCrawler has the capability to Find Similar Documents. More help: Getting started and Power searching.
- Yahoo!
- When you search for things on the Web, you may very well start at Yahoo!, but that doesn't mean it's a search engine: it's a directory. Web directories -- Yahoo! is the best and by far the best known -- are organized collections of Web sites categorized by subject. Although they typically include a search engine (Yahoo! uses the AltaVista search engine), directories are more useful than search engines when you're after general information. Unlike most directories, it does not use automated tools to build its indexes. Everything included in Yahoo! is indexed by a human. More help: Getting started and Power searching.
| Searching Strategy | Subject Directories | Single Search Engines | Metasearch Engines |
One of the great features
of the Internet is the amount of information it contains. The World Wide
Web alone hosts tens of millions of sites. Growth in the number of sites is
exponential and little or no bibliographic control exists. To find sites
containing information on a specific subject, you may use three basic
approaches: a single search engine, a metasearch engine, or a subject
guide or directory such as Yahoo!, Snap, and Magellan. Interesting more
software for searching the Web is becoming hybrid (i.e. offering both a
single search engine using keywords and a directory of subjects from the
same site). AltaVista is an example of a single search engines that
includes a subject directory as well and Yahoo! is an example of a
subject directory that now includes a single search engine as well.
Subject
directories (guides or trees)
are for browsing general topics, but for specific information use a search
engine. Subject trees allow you to locate sites within a subject
hierarchy. They are useful when you need general information on a topic,
or an overview of what is available on a topic on the Internet, or when
you do not have a clear and distinct idea of the information you require.
They are a great place to start looking.
For a specific
question, and to access the full potential of the Internet, you will need
to access a search engine. This is a web site which links to a database of
information about Web sites. At the simplest level, they are accessed by
typing key words into a text box.
All search engines do
keyword searches against a database, but various factors influence the
results from each. Size of the database, frequency of update, search
capability and design, and speed may lead to amazingly different results.
No search engine has indexed the entire Web and there are large variations
in the results of a search between the different search engines. Recent
addition of new content, redesign and partnership changes have fulfilled
the mission of the new name: portals. This name implies a starting point
and central location for all uses of the Web