17:610:530 Principles of Searching
Tefko Saracevic
Sample of search engines
AltaVista http://www.altavista.com
AltaVista was one of the first publicly available search engines. Besides text retrieval, it also contains a feature that allows users to search for visual images.
DMOZ Open Directory Project http://dmoz.org/
Not really a search engine but in their words "A definite catalog of the Web." "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." Directories can be downloaded free for own browser. Hosted and administered by Netscape Communication Corporation. DMOZ stands for Directory Mozilla an open source project.
Ditto - see the Web. http://www.ditto.com/
A search engine for visulals, with over 1 million photographs, images, and other graphics. Includes a filter.
Excite http://www.excite.com
Used to be a perennial competition to Yahoo!, but it went into bankruptcy, and then was sold, and then... Anyhow it is still operational.
Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC). SearchERIC http://searcheric.org/
"The Educational Resources Information Center (ERIC) database is the world's largest source of education information. The database contains more than 1,000,000 abstracts of documents and journal articles on education research and practice." Search engine provides a variety of options, including an access to the ERIC Thesaurus.
ERIC Clearinghouse on Assessment and Evaluation http://www.ericae.net/ provides, among others, access to a Full Text Internet Library of books and journals.
Google http://www.google.com
Google is the biggest search engine on the Web, followed by WiseNut and AllTheWeb. Google is distinguished by its ranking algorithm based on how many other pages link to each page, along with other factors like the proximity of your search keywords or phrases in the documents. It uses not only the number of other pages that link to a page, but also the importance of the other links (measured by the links to each of them). They claim, that there is no way anyone can buy or influence the ranking of his or her page in Google (unlike some other search engines and directories). The unique PageRank™ technology is explained at http://www.google.com/technology/index.html. Google also offers to search and display in various languages, set filters, search images, search usenet groups, and more.
Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/index.html
A massive effort to archive the Web. "The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public." Powered by the Wayback Machine - it searches for the past versions of URLs.
KartOO SA http://www.kartoo.com
"You just have to put a word in the toolbar, and you'll obtain a map." And you do. And what an interesting map! Browsable. Searches Web sources and a number of search engines. An alternative way to display results. Developed in France. Multilingual.
National Library of Medicine. PubMed. http://pubmed.antarcti.ca/start
"The pubmed.antarcti.ca webserver is a demonstration of Antarcti.ca System Inc.'s Visual Net™ product. Visual Net is a revolutionary web-based search and discovery tool that helps people find information in complex directories and databases." Interesting and innovative approach to searching
NorthernLight http://www.northernlight.com
This used to be by far the best engine for retrieval of scholarly material. However, it got into financial problems, got sold etc. But it still is a qualitative search engine. Special Collections covers proprietary publications - many journals. Has a number of fee based services.
Raging http://www.raging.com
Raging is interesting because it is the site where AltaVista tests its new, experimental algorithms. It is a plain search interface without the 'bells and whistles' that crowd other sites.
Teoma http://www.teoma.com
"Teoma was founded in 2000 in Piscataway, New Jersey by a team of scientists from Rutgers University. Teoma means "expert" in Gaelic. Ask Jeeves, Inc. acquired Teoma in September 2000." Provides three responses: results of relevant Web pages, suggestions for refinement and narrowing, and list of link collections.
Web Brain http://www.webbrain.com/
"The Smartest Way to See the Web." Meaning that it has a unique way of searching through the classified directory. Displays subsequent categories through a hyperbolic tree or lattice structure. Fun to play with.
Yahoo! http://www.yahoo.com
Next to Google, Yahoo! is the most popular portal on the Web. It includes a search engine, large classified catalog (classification is it strong point), and a number of subject specialized sub-portals, such as for finance: http://finance.yahoo.com. Yahoo! spread from the U.S. to a number of countries worldwide.
Sample of meta search engines
Search engines that cover other search engines
Dogpile http://www.dogpile.com
Sends a query to at least a dozen individual search engines and groups the results each site retrieves.
CNet Search.com (formerly SavvySearch) http://www.search.com/
Gateway to over 800 search engines, directories etc. Meta engine of meta engines. Lets you customize which sources to includein a search.
ez2www http://ez2www.com
"Directory over 3.8 million sites listed in 460,000 categories - Over 1,000 Specifics Search Engines." Comprehensive. International. Numerous search capabilities. Very good!
InfoGrid Master Internet Index http://www.infogrid.com
"InfoGrid consolidates popular news and information from over 3000 news sources, 12 top internet search engines, 16,000 direct-links, 3.1 million Open Directory links, 35,000 usenet news forums, top internet auctions and vendors without advertising." Searches a number of information sources: search engines, yellow pages, MP3 archives and much more. Also has a Kidsgrid.
IxQuick http://ixquick.com/
"It was created keeping researchers, educators, historians, librarians, scholars, students and the world's scientific, literary and media community in mind." Searches the Web, news, images, MP3. Clen interface. Powerfull engine. Ranks by relevance.
Multi-Search-Engine.com http://www.multi-search-engine.com
"Select two search engines at a time from the list of 42." Provides access to a number of reference tools, directiries, companies etc. Crowded.
Open Text: Query Server http://www.queryserver.com/web.htm
"The Query Server is a powerful federated search solution offered by Open Text that unifies access to multiple internal and external information sources." Broadcasts query to about a dozen search engines and lists results. Provides clusters of results. Software can be purchased for internal use.
Search Engines Worldwide http://www.twics.com/~takakuwa/search/search.html
"Hi, welcome to Search Engines Worldwide which is a list of global and local search engines sorted by countries in the world. Search Engines Worldwide is one of the largest collection of search engines on the internet." Covers over 1,300 search engines in some 170 countries from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.
Suchspider.de http://www.suchspider.de/meta-suchmaschinen
An example of meta search engines from other countries - in this case German. Searches some 70 search engines and directories.
Vivisimo http://vivisimo.com/
Among the top meta search engines. Organizes results in clusters. In addition to the Web, searches a number of other sources, such as Top News, eBay etc.
Reviews, directories, keeping up
About.com Web Search http://websearch.about.com
In addition to exhaustive coverage of Web search engines, includes a number of tools and news about searching and a Web Search Forum.
The Virtual Acquisition Shelf & News Desk http://resourceshelf.blogspot.com/
" Resources and News for Information Professionals." Maintained by Gary Price, well known author and Web commentator. Among others, up to date news about search engines.
Search Engine Showdown http://searchengineshowdown.com/
Run by Greg Notess, reference librarian at Montana State University and a noted author about search engines.. "Search Engine Showdown, the users' guide to Web searching, compares and evaluates Internet search engines from the searcher's perspective. Developed originally as a way to keep track of the search engines and share that information, the site has grown to include Search engine features chart; Detailed search engine reviews; An online newsletter; Statistical analysis; Search strategies."
Search Engine Watch http://www.searchenginewatch.com/
Authoritative. Includes search engine listing, reviews, ratings, tests, resources, tutorials, and more. Provides statistics, search engine resources, tutorials for searching. Great amount of information about search engines. Authoritative also as a reference site.
Web 100 http://www.web100.com/
"WELCOME to the WEB 100, where user ratings and reviews of Web sites guide you to the best of the Web. The Web 100's rankings change hourly, with new sites added each day." Ratings in various areas. Not clear how ratings are done 'best' is a relative tewrm at best. Many interesting leads and a lot of information about a variety of topics related to the Web.
last update 28 Oct 2002 Tefko Saracevic