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Popular Search Engines

AltaVista
This search engine is one of the largest search engines on the web, in terms of absolute web pages indexed. Because of this, and some pretty powerful searching commands and options, it is a popular search engine for Internet researchers and average users alike. Altavista has been indexing the Internet since December 1995.

Ask Jeeves
Ask Jeeves is a human-powered search service that aims to direct you to the exact page that answers your specific english type question. If it fails to find a match within its own database, then it will provide matching web pages from various other search engines. Ask Jeeves has been in operation since June 1, 1997. Some results from Ask Jeeves also appear within AltaVista.

Direct Hit
This site aims not just to provide you with a list of keyword links, but also to rank them according to relevency. To do this, Direct Hit measures what people click on in the search results presented at its own site and at its partner sites, such as HotBot. Sites that get clicked on more than others rise higher in Direct Hit's rankings. Thus, the service dubs itself a "popularity engine."

Excite
Excite is consistently one of the more popular search services on the web. Not only does excite have a large index of web sites, it also includes non-web materials such as company information and sports scores. Excite was launched in late 1995.

FAST Search
Formerly called All The Web, FAST Search aims to index the entire web. That is a big job as you can imagine, as a result, they were first search engine to break the 200 million web page index milestone. To this day, they still have one of the largest indexes of the web. FAST Search launched in May 1999.

Go / Infoseek
Go is a portal site. It offers portal features such as personalization and free e-mail, plus the search capabilities of the former Infoseek search service, which has now been folded into Go. In addition to a web index, Go has a human-compiled directory of web sites. Go officially launched in January 1999. The former Infoseek index service launched in early 1995.

GoTo
No related to Go (above) Unique amoung major search engines, GoTo sells its main listings. Companies can pay money to be placed higher in the search results, which GoTo feels improves relevancy. Non-paid results come from Inktomi. GoTo launched in 1997.

Google
Google is a popular search engine that makes heavy use of link popularity as a primary way to rank the web sites it returns in search results. This can be especially helpful in finding good sites in response to general searches such as "cars" and "travel," because users across the web have in essence voted for good sites by linking to them.

HotBot
HotBot is a favorite among researchers due to its many power searching features. HotBot launched in May 1996 as Wired Digital's entry into the search engine market. Lycos purchased Wired Digital in October 1998 and continues to run HotBot as a separate search service.

IWon
iWon gives away daily, weekly and monthly prizes in a marketing model unique among the major services. It launched in Fall 1999. IWon is backed by US television network CBS.

LookSmart
LookSmart is a human-compiled directory of web sites. LookSmart launched independently in October 1996.

Lycos
Lycos started out as a search engine, depending on listings that came from spidering the web. In April 1999, it shifted to a directory model similar to Yahoo.

MSN Search
Microsoft's MSN Search service is a LookSmart-powered directory of web sites, with secondary results that come from Inktomi. MSN Search also offers a unique way for Internet Explorer 5 users to save past searches.

Netscape Search
Netscape Search's results come primarily from the Open Directory and Netscape's own "Smart Browsing" database, which does an excellent job of listing "official" web sites. Secondary results come from Google.

Northern Light
Northern Light is another favorite search engine among researchers. It features a large index of the web, along with the ability to cluster documents by topic. Northern Light also has a set of "special collection" documents that are not readily accessible to search engine spiders. There are documents from thousands of sources, including newswires, magazines and databases. Searching these documents is free, but there is a charge of up to $4 to view them. There is no charge to view documents on the public web -- only for those within the special collection. Northern Light opened to general use in August 1997.

Open Directory
The Open Directory uses volunteer editors to catalog the web. Formerly known as NewHoo, it was launched in June 1998. It was acquired by Netscape in November 1998. Lycos and AOL Search also make heavy use of Open Directory data, while AltaVista and HotBot prominently feature Open Directory categories within their results pages.

Raging Search
Operated by AltaVista, Raging Search uses the same core index as AltaVista and virtually the same ranking algorithms. Why use it? AltaVista offers it for those who want fast search results, with no portal features getting in the way.

Snap / NBCi
Snap is a human-compiled directory of web sites, supplemented by search results from Inktomi. Like LookSmart, it aims to challenge Yahoo as the champion of categorizing the web. Snap launched in late 1997 and is backed by Cnet and NBC. In October 2000, Snap was folded into NBCi which offers portal services in addition to search capabilities.

WebCrawler
WebCrawler has the smallest index of any major search engine on the web. Some people may feel that by having indexed fewer pages, WebCrawler provides less overwhelming results in response to general searches.

Yahoo
Yahoo is the web's most popular search service and has a well-deserved reputation for helping people find information easily. The secret to Yahoo's success is human beings. It is the largest human-compiled guide to the web, employing more than 150 editors in an effort to categorize the web. Yahoo has over 1 million sites listed. Yahoo also supplements its results with those from Google. Yahoo is the oldest major web site directory, having launched in late 1994.

Other Search Engines

Voila

This search engine is run by France Telecom and is available in a number of regional formats.

About.com
Formerly the Mining Company, this site features over 600 "guides" offering original content in various areas. This is not truely a seach engine, but the guides are very helpful, and often contain many links to interesting and relevent sites on specific topics.

HotLinks
This site contains collections of peoples bookmarks/favorites. By doing this, it hopes to show you a view of what is popular on the web.

4anything.com
This site has indivdual mini websites that are devoted to specific topics

Britannica.com
This site links top web sites and the extensive content of the Encyclopedia Britannica into one interface.

Top9.com
This site organizes web sites into categories and then ranks them by popularity as determined by online ratings from PC Data Online.

Links2Go
This is another directory style search engine that uses artifical intelligence techniques to cluster related topics and URLs together.

Qango.com
Another directory of web sites.

Meta Search Engines

Meta Search engines are search tools which look across multiple databases and often eliminate redundant listings. Here is a list of some we consider to be the best:

Ixquick
This meta search engine is fast, comprehensive and ranks findings by relevance to boot! Ixquick searches 14 engines. Results ranked by relevancy and includes information about which search engine it came from. Currently one of the few meta search tools that supports regular searches, natural language searches, and advanced boolean searches, and knows which engines can handle which types of searches. If a page is listed in more than one search engine, Ixquick tells you which engines and how it was ranked. Does include some redundant listings but overall one of the best metasearch engines out there. Currently the default search engine on my browser!

Dataware
A set of meta search engines that provides user options to customize results and groups findings by topic. Includes meta search options for general searches, financial searches, health/ medical and federal government searches. We found this metasearch engine easy to use, providing highly relevant listings from the ten search engines it covers and it organizes the findings into logical groupings.

Metor
Fast and comprehensive metasearch engine. Metor with its easy to navigate clean layout searches the top ten search engine databases, eliminates redundant listings providing highly relevant listings and live listings. In addition to its general metasearch function Metor has 24 topic specific metasearch channels. While limited in scope, these channels may be just the place to start a topic specific search.

C4
Comprehensive, but occasionally slow searches of up to 16 search engines with one query. Present results in groups of ten, with duplicates and irrelevant listings included. C4 is the new version with additional search features and personalization features.

InfoZoid
Easy to use meta search engine, but it does have some annoying flashing banners on the page. Includes the ability to control searches, and description for listings. Searches 8 engines quickly. Listings are average in relevancy, shown as one long easy to scroll page. Does include redundant listings.