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Links for Research—Search Engines

Use the tools on this page when you want to find internet sites related to a specific topic, when you know enough about the topic to have good descriptive search terms to effectively target your search.

  • For Web directories, see the Web Directories page.
  • For descriptions and evaluations of the features of various directories and engines, see the Evaluations section below.

Note: the links below take you further down on this page.

Search engines - single databases
Search engines - multiple databasesEvaluations of Web directories and search engines

Search engines - single databases

AllTheWeb - http://www.alltheweb.com/
Search help - http://www.alltheweb.com/help/faqs/web_search
Advanced search help - http://www.alltheweb.com/help/faqs/advanced
 
Alta Vista - http://www.altavista.com/
Search help - http://www.altavista.com/sites/help/search/default
Advanced search help - http://www.altavista.com/sites/help/search/help_adv
 
Ask.com (formerley Ask Jeeves) - http://www.ask.com/
Search help - http://about.ask.com/en/docs/about/help_central.shtml
 
Google - http://www.google.com/
Search help - http://www.google.com/help/index.html
Advanced search help - http://www.google.com/help/refinesearch.html
 
MSN - http://search.msn.com
Yahoo! - http://www.yahoo.com/
Search help - http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/

Search engines - multiple databases

Dogpile - http://www.dogpile.com/
Dogpile will fetch results from several major search engines.
 
Ixquick - http://www.ixquick.com/
"Highlighted result" feature will show you where to find your search terms in each document.
 
Meta-Crawler - http://www.metacrawler.com/
MetaCrawler sends your queries to several web search engines, including About, Ask Jeeves, FindWhat, LookSmart, and Overture.
 
Surfwax - http://www.surfwax.com/
If you open a free account, you can choose which of hundreds of search engines to query and save your search results to use later.
 
Vivisimo - http://vivisimo.com/
Queries multiple search engines and uses document clustering technology to categorize results.

Evaluations of Web directories and search engines

NoodleQuest - http://www.noodletools.com/noodlequest/
Recommends search engines based on your research goals and familiarity with the Internet.
 
Search Engine Watch - http://www.searchenginewatch.com/reports/index.html
Search engine reviews, ratings, and tests.
 
Web Searching
part of the Internet Public Library
http://www.ipl.org/div/websearching/
Describes the features of Alta Vista, Ask Jeeves, Google, Hotbot, Ixquick, and Yahoo!

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A+ Research & Writing for high school and college students was created by Kathryn L. Schwartz

     
 
   
 
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The Internet Public Library is a public library for the world wide web.
Students from a consortium of colleges and universities with programs in information science develop and maintain the IPL!
Here are some of the partners in the IPL Consortium. A complete list is found on the IPL Consortium page.

The iSchool at Drexel Florida State University College of Information
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduate School of Library and Information Science Rutgers School of Communication and Information Studies University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Information and Library Science University of Pittsburgh School of Information Sciences
Syracuse University School of Information The University of Texas at Austin - School of Information The Information School - University of Washington

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