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Search Resources on the Web

With billions of pages on the World Wide Web, how do you find the information you're looking for? Search sites are the answer. There are two major search tools: engines and directories. A search engine is an electronic tool that automatically catalogs words in web sites and then creates an index of those words and sites. A search directory, on the other hand, relies on people to create descriptions of sites. When you search using a directory, you are searching only the words in the descriptions, not in the sites themselves. Whether you search using engines or directories, you can use the same simple techniques to produce good results.

  • Be specific. For example, if you are looking for information on college scholarship opportunities for minorities, type minority college scholarship in the search box, rather than just scholarship.
  • Use quotation marks for exact phrases. For example, if you want to find a recipe for the dessert cherries jubilee, type "cherries jubilee recipe" or your results might include sites on paintings and poems titled Cherries Jubilee.
  • Check your spelling. Spelling counts with search tools, so if you want information about Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, you will not receive the results you are looking for if you type in Bulawoya.

Search Resources

  • AltaVista - AltaVista delivered the Internet’s first searchable, full-text database on the World Wide Web.  It features advanced search features and capabilities such as multimedia searching, translation and language recognition and specialty searching.
    http://www.altavista.com
  • All the Web - All the Web’s index is provided by Yahoo! It includes billions of web pages as well as tens of millions of PDF and MS Word files.  It offers a variety of specialized search tools and advanced search features, and supports searching in 36 different languages.
    http://www.alltheweb.com
  • Ask.com (formerly AskJeeves) - Ask.com is different from other search directories because it allows you to ask questions using natural language, rather than special searching techniques.  For example, you can type How do I change a flat tire? And Ask.com will return the relevant information.
    www.ask.com
  • Google - Google is one of the most popular of the sites available.  It has gained widespread praise for providing relevant results because the search engine ranks Web sites based on popularity.
    www.google.com
  • Librarians’ Internet Index - This index contains resources particularly useful to public library users.  The entries have been evaluated and annotated by librarians.
    http://lii.org
  • LookSmart - LookSmart offers what it calls their “Vertical Search”, providing categories such as auto, cities, home living, money, travel to narrow your search.  The site lists several featured publications such as Art Culinaire, Chicago Sun-Times, and Ebony.  It allows you to “…find what you need, save what you like and share what you want.”
    http://search.looksmart.com
  • Lycos - Lycos is a large and popular search directory.  It also offers Lycos email.  You can search by category such as music or entertainment.  It offers links to hot new topics, blogs and parental controls to filter searches.
    www.lycos.com
  • MSN Search - MSN is Microsoft’s search tool.  It provides a search engine, index and crawler all based on Microsoft technology.  It also provides Hotmail email.
    http://search.msn.com
  • Netscape Search - Netscape provides searching capability enhanced by Google.  It allows you to narrow your search to the Web, image searches or shopping and provides links to things such as yellow pages, maps and weather.
    http://search.netscape.com
  • Northern Light - Northern Light offers a site oriented to business.  It provides several different search engines such as Business Research Engine, News Engine, Enterprise Search Engine etc.  It offers a fee-based membership to its business research engine.
    www.northernlight.com
  • Open Directory Project - The Open Directory Project bills itself as the “largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web”.  It is built and maintained by volunteer editors.  Visitors to the site can sign up to become an editor and make suggestions about sites to include or remove from the Open Directory index.  Other search engines and portals such as Netscape Search, AOL Search, Google, Lycos, HotBot, DirectHit are powered by the Open Directory Project.
    http://dmoz.org
  • WebCrawler - When you do a search in WebCrawler, it searches the best results from a combined pool of several search engines such as Google, Yahoo, MSN Search, Ask.com, etc.  It bills itself as “the easiest way to find better search results from more of the Web.”
    www.webcrawler.com
  • What You Need to Know About - Professional guides organize the topics in this search tool  For each topic an expert supplies Web site listings as well as their own articles or chat rooms where you can learn more.
    www.about.co
  • Yahoo - Yahoo is one of the most popular search directories.  Yahoo offers features such as search sites for different categories, such as restaurants, and for specific cities and geographic regions.  It also offers Yahoo mail.
    www.yahoo.com

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