New York State Library | Internet Bibliographies

Internet Search Tools

General Search Engines | Meta Search Engines | Subject Guides | Web Searching Techniques
Last reviewed: November 18, 2005

General Search Engines

A9
A search engine developed by Amazon.com which incorporates a history, customizable interface, easy searching of Wikipedia, Amazon's "search inside the book" and plenty of other features that make it unique. Google is used as the backend for searching the web. To use some features it is necessary to have a user account on Amazon.com.
http://a9.com/

All the Web, All the Time
One of the more recently developed Web indexing tools, this search engine indexes a very large database. It has separate search boxes for audio, FTP, and picture files. Advanced search options support domain filters, word filters, and allow searching in 25 different languages.
http://www.alltheweb.com

AltaVista
Alta Vista has a large database. It can perform searches in Spanish or English and translate words, phrases, and entire Web sites online into all sorts of languages using "Babelfish". Other improvements include phrase detection, spell check, Family Filter, and natural language capabilities.
http://www.altavista.com

Ask Jeeves
Jeeves is a search engine that is intended to be used with natural language questions. There are many extra features such as suggesting other terms that are along the same subject lines and local searching.
http://www.ask.com/

Google
The most extensive search engine on the Web. Google search results are ranked based on site popularity rather than the common practice of paid positioning. Google also has specialized searches for certain operating systems, government documents, maps and scholarly articles. A single click translation service is available for most pages which will translate to the user's primary language. It also caches Web pages allowing an individual to view pages that are not currently available or that are on overburdened servers.
http://www.google.com

HotBot
HotBot allows many search options such as language, images, javascript, video, and MP3. Advanced search options allow searching by date, page depth, and domain name.
http://www.hotbot.com/

WebCrawler
WebCrawler is one of the oldest search engines and uses the Excite search software to search the Web. It is good for simple searching.
http://www.webcrawler.com

Yahoo
Yahoo is a collection of classified subject resources. If no matches are found in its own database, it searches using Google to search the rest of the Web. Options at the bottom of the screen link to searches in a particular country (Denmark, France, Mexico) or city (Los Angeles, New York City) which may be in the native language of that country.
http://www.yahoo.com

Meta Search Engines

These search engines search multiple databases simultaneously. Both of these search engines remove the duplicates before presenting the search results.

Dogpile
Searches the major search engines simultaneously and allows the user to view the combined results or compare the results of the various engines side by side.
http://www.dogpile.com/

MetaCrawler
MetaCrawler simultaneously searches Lycos, Infoseek, WebCrawler, Excite, AltaVista, Thunderstone, DirectHit, LookSmart, and Yahoo. A brief annotation is provided with the search results.
http://www.metacrawler.com

Subject Guides

These subject guides are a starting point to specific information on the Web. Although they do provide search engines, those engines search only on the individual Web site (i.e., a search on the Librarians' Index to the Internet will only show sites listed on the Librarians' Index to the Internet).

Internet Public Library
Originally begun as a project of the University of Michigan School of Information and Library Studies, the Internet Public Library locates, evaluates, annotates and organizes the information resources of the Internet which would be of interest to patrons of a public library.
http://www.ipl.org

Librarians' Index to the Internet
The Librarians' Index to the Internet is a searchable, annotated subject directory of more than 5,800 Internet resources selected and evaluated by librarians for their usefulness to users of public libraries. It is now produced by the Berkeley Digital Library SunSITE at the University of California at Berkeley.
http://lii.org

Scout Report Archives
The Internet Scout Project, located in the Computer Sciences Department of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, is funded by the National Science Foundation. Resources can be searched by either a quick or complex search engine. Links can also be browsed by Library of Congress subject headings.
http://scout.wisc.edu/Archives/

Web Searching Techniques

For more information on how search engines work, how to search, and tables and charts describing how these tools work, see the following articles:

Beyond General World Wide Web Searching (From UC Berkeley)
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/BeyondWeb.html

Checklist of Internet Research Tips (from the University at Albany)
http://library.albany.edu/internet/checklist.html

How to Choose a Search Engine or Directory
http://library.albany.edu/internet/choose.html

Searching the Internet : Subject indexes and Search Engines
http://www.sldirectory.com/search.html

Recommended Search Strategy: Search With Peripheral Vision
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Strategies.html