Search tools
Search engines used to be specialized. Top search engines now usually offer some combination of these two functions:
- Keyword search, also called "crawler-based," is a brute-force approach based on an automatically generated database. Fast servers progressively scan the entire Web, maintaining a huge index database, which you can then run keyword searches against. Use keyword search when you know a particular word, words, or phrase that will tag the kind of content you're looking for, or when there don't seem to be any categories relevant to your subject matter in catalog subject trees.
- A subject catalog is a human-maintained collection of categories, which contain links to sites selected as being high-quality, with the categories arranged in a hierarchical subject-based tree structure. Subject catalogs are useful when you don't have good keywords, when you're looking for general information on a particular subject, or when you're looking for particularly credible or complete resources on that subject.
For some more-specialized search resources, see my
Tools for writers & researchers page.
- Google (1998)
http://www.google.com/
Wikipedia
- The big dog of search: fast and accurate. Hits on Google are ranked higher if more sites link to them, especially if the other sites are high-ranking themselves.
Image search, other specialized search tools,
Google Maps,*
Google Product Search for shopping (formerly known as Froogle) experimental new tools at
Google Labs, and other services including
Gmail. Click more on the main page for even more Google stuff.
- Google Directory
http://www.google.com/dirhp
- Google's subject-catalog content.
- Google Groups (2001)
http://groups.google.com/
- Google took over the Usenet newsgroups search site that used to be known as DejaNews.
- Yahoo! (1994)
http://www.yahoo.com/
Wikipedia
- One of the early Web search tools, still very popular. Originally primarily a subject catalog, now mainly crawler-based.
Yahoo! Mail Web-mail, image searches, yellow pages, shopping, many other services.
- Yahoo! fast-loading version
http://search.yahoo.com/
- A minimalist version of the Yahoo! search interface; great for dialup. (It's amusing how much it looks like Google.)
- Yahoo! Directory
http://dir.yahoo.com/
- You can still search just the Yahoo! subject catalog by starting here; this is how Yahoo! used to work.
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- Open Directory Project (1998)
http://www.dmoz.org/
Wikipedia
- "The largest human edited directory of the Web."
- Bing (Microsoft)
http://www.bing.com/
Wikipedia
- Search offering that replaced Live Search, which replaced MSN Search.
- AOL Search
http://search.aol.com/
- Powered by Google; mainly of use to AOL subscribers.
- Ask.com (1998)
http://www.ask.com/
Wikipedia
- Now crawler-based; formerly a natural-language engine known as
Ask Jeeves.
- MyWay (2002?)
http://www.myway.com/
- Property of Ask.com.
- Netscape Search
http://channels.netscape.com/search/
- Powered by Google; lists some of Netscape's own content at top of results pages.
- MySearch
http://www.mysearch.com/
- "Get fast results from leading search engines with one click" (doesn't seem to be a true metacrawler though).
- AllTheWeb.com
http://www.alltheweb.com
- Powered by Yahoo; interesting interface (formerly known as FAST Search).
- Librarians' Internet Index
http://lii.org/
- WWW Virtual Library (1991)
http://vlib.org/
- The oldest Web catalog, started by Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of HTML and the Web, at CERN; run by volunteers.
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Metasearch engines send your search text to multiple search engines, and then combine the results in some innovative, useful, or interesting manner. See also the Wikipedia Metasearch engine article including criticism, and the list in the
Metasearch engines section of
List of search engines.
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A keyword is just a particular word that you suspect will appear on pages that meet your needs, and fail to appear on pages that don't. Canny and subtle keyword selection is very important in getting results out of this type of search engine; you'll get better at it with experience.
Actually, a keyword search string can be a single word, a list of words, an exact phrase, or more complicated strings. Each system is a little different, but usually you can do things like specifying words that must not appear on selected pages, specifying that two words must appear "near" each other, exact capitalization match or not, and pulling a list of Web pages that link to a particular URL (yours, for instance).
There are some tricks that seem to work the same on many search pages:
| Search string |
Result |
| List of words |
List of pages matching any word in the list, weighted higher the more words they match |
| Word list in all lower-case |
Case-insensitive matches |
| Word list with some words capitalized |
Case-sensitive exact word matches |
| Phrase enclosed in quotes |
Only pages containing the exact phrase inside the quotes |
You can do much more complex and advanced searches. For each search system, there will be help pages; often there will be one called something like "advanced search help" that will guide you in the use of the site's most sophisticated features. Learning some of those, at least for the keyword search sites you use most often, should be worth your while.
- Search Engine Watch
http://searchenginewatch.com/
Wikipedia
- Search Engine Showdown
http://searchengineshowdown.com/
- Traffick
http://www.traffick.com/
- A search engine blog.
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- Dogpile SearchSpy
http://www.dogpile.com/dogpile/ws/searchspy/
- Watch other people's search strings; scrolling display. Fascinating.
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