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Internet Search Engines

Internet search engines (eg Google, AltaVista) help users find web pages on a given subject. The search engines maintain databases of web sites and use programs (often referred to as "spiders" or "robots") to collect information, which is then indexed by the search engine.

Similar services are provided by "directories," which maintain ordered lists of websites, eg Yahoo!

Search engines are much like a program which acts as a card catalog for the Internet. Search engines attempt to index and locate desired information by searching for keywords in which a user specifies. The method for finding this information is usually done by maintaining indices of Web resources that can be queried for the keywords entered by the user.

Google

http://www.google.com
Google provides the option to find more than web pages. Using on the top of the search box on the Google home page, you can easily seek out images from across the web, discussions that are taking place on Usenet newsgroups, locate news information or perform product searching.

Yahoo

http://www.yahoo.com
Launched in 1994, Yahoo is the web's oldest "directory," a place where human editors organize web sites into categories. In addition to excellent search results, you can use tabs above the search box on the Yahoo home page to seek images, Yellow Page listings or use Yahoo's excellent shopping search engine.

MSN Search

http://www.msn.com
Microsoft provides search of the web, news, images and its own encyclopedia, Encarta. Also offers desktop search via a toolbar.

Ask.com

http://www.ask.com
http://www.askjeeves.com
Ask Jeeves initially gained fame in 1998 and 1999 as being the "natural language" search engine that let you search by asking questions and responded with what seemed to be the right answer to everything. In reality, technology wasn't what made Ask Jeeves perform so well.

AllTheWeb.com

http://www.alltheweb.com
Powered by Yahoo, you may find AllTheWeb a lighter, more customizable and pleasant "pure search" experience than you get at Yahoo itself. The focus is on web search, but news, picture, video, MP3 and FTP search are also offered.

AOL Search

http://aolsearch.aol.com (internal)
http://search.aol.com (external)
AOL Search provides users with editorial listings that come Google's crawler-based index. Indeed, the same search on Google and AOL Search will come up with very similar matches.

HotBot

http://www.hotbot.com
HotBot provides easy access to the web's three major crawler-based search engines: Yahoo, Google and Teoma. Unlike a meta search engine, it cannot blend the results from all of these crawlers together.

Teoma

http://www.teoma.com
Teoma is a crawler-based search engine owned by Ask Jeeves. It has a smaller index of the web than its rival crawler-competitors Google and Yahoo.

Alexa

http://www.alexa.com/
Founded in April 1996, Alexa Internet grew out of a vision of Web navigation that is intelligent and constantly improving with the participation of its users. Alexa Related Links and Traffic Rankings are the embodiment of this vision, growing and getting better as more people join the Alexa community of smart Web surfers. back to top

Snap.com

http://www.snap.com/
Since its official launch in October of 2004, Snap has added both users and innovative technology, in the process developing new and unique ways to make searching easier and more relevant. Instead of just relying on computer algorithms to rank search results, Snap also uses click-stream information from a network of one million Internet users.

Open Directory Project

http://dmoz.org/
The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a vast, global community of volunteer editors. The Open Directory follows in the footsteps of some of the most important editor/contributor projects of the 20th century.

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