Serious Searching

---

Main Page  Hardware Links News Links Program info Search

---

Our Current Search Ratings

• Biggest, Fastest: FAST (alltheweb)
  Runner-up: Google

• Coolest, Easiest, Most Fun: Ask Jeeves

• Most Comprehensive Results: Google

• Highest Overall Usability Rating: AltaVista
  Runner-up: Yahoo

• Best Search Engine For Kids: Ask Jeeves For Kids

• Most Relevant Results: Google
  Runner-up: AltaVista

• Most Likely to Find a Hit When Others Can't: Northern Light
  Runner-up:AltaVista

• Google -The NEW KING of the search engines. Claims over a billion pages. Adds weight to frequent citations. 
• AltaVista - Lots of neat extras, such as translation. 
• Yahoo! -Web index pioneer. Such a huge directory, it is a virtual SE. 
• Excite -Rated as one of the best SEs. Owns easy to use Webcrawler, a favorite.  
• Lycos -"Wolf spider" (Latin). Owns HotBot offering parallel, scalable searches. Search a domain,eg. [.edu].  
• NorthernLight -Has a special pay collection.  
• GoTo -Paid rankings give commercial relevance. 
• DirectHit -Aims for relevance using popularity factor. 
• IXQuick -Up and coming SE. Highly rated.
• Snap -Clean design for this fast growing heavyweight. 
• AllTheWeb -Uses 'Fast' search technology, but actually kinda mediocre and disappointing. 
• InfoSeek -Slipping

• Adult SEs
• Arts & Humanities SEs  
• Book SEs  
• Business SEs  
• Career & Job SEs  
• Education SEs  
• Entertainment SEs  
• Foreign SEs  
• Games SEs  
• Government & Politics SEs  
• Health & Medicine SEs  
• Image & Sound SEs 
• Kids SEs 
• Legal SEs  
• Library SEs  
• Maps & Directions SEs  
• Music and MP3 SEs 
• News & Weather SEs  
• People SEs  
• Reference SEs  
• Regional US & Canada SEs  
• Science & Technology SEs  
• Shopping SEs  
• Site Award & Best of Web SEs  
• Software & Computer SEs  
• Sports & Recreation SEs  
• Travel SEs 
• Web & Online SEs 

Complete SE list
META Search Engines
Pay For Position SEs
Web Directories
URLSubmission & Promotion
Search Tools
New Stuff
SE Other
Other All-In-1
Links

Major Search Engines and Web Directories

AOL Search
AOL Search is the one place where you can simultaneously search all of AOL and the rest of the Internet. Uses ODP directory data.

AltaVista
Altitude is one of the most comprehensive search engines, featuring blazing speed, results that can be selectively refined, and a search for documents in specific languages. Worldwide: Asia, Australia, Canada, Latin America, and Europe.

Ask Jeeves
Ask Jeeves a question using natural language, and you'll likely get an accurate answer from its database of more than 7 million questions, with links to what you're seeking.

Direct Hit
The Direct Hit Popularity Engine shows you highly relevant results based on the search topics that other people have researched.

Excite
Excite goes beyond keyword search and tries to understand underlying concepts. Results can be sorted by Web site; prompts with keyword list to help refine searches. Worldwide: Australia, France, Germany, Excite Japan, Netherlands, Sweden, United Kingdom.

FAST
FAST claims to have the largest index of any search engine, and aims to eventually have every page on the Web in its database.

Go/Infoseek
Infoseek is perhaps the best at handling plain-language queries. It clusters results from a single site, offering suggestions for related topics. Worldwide: Brasil, Danmark, Deutschland, en español, France, Italia, Japan, Nederland, Sverige, United Kingdom.

Google!
Yet another search engine born at Stanford (so were Yahoo and Excite), Google ranks results both on how many links point to a page (importance) and search phrase matching.

GoTo
This "capitalist" search engine ranks results by how much a company is willing to pay for listings—useful for making judgements but potentially crowding out sites with small budgets.

HotBot
HotBot uses parallel processing technology to index Web documents. Its flexible search interface can limit searches by date, domain, or media.

IWON
Search and win cash: CBS affiliated search engine IWON gives away daily, weekly, and monthly prizes.

LookSmart
This Web directory with more than 18,000 subjects is rapidly rising in popularity according to Media Metrix and Relevant Knowledge usage ratings. Worldwide: Australia, United Kingdom.

Lycos
Lycos offers many features beyond searching the Web. Uses "LiveWire" agent technology to rank sites, then allows you to vote on the usefulness of results. Worldwide: Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.

MSN
Microsoft's search engine, powered by Inktomi, uses RealNames, Direct Hit, and its own editorially compiled directory listings.

Netscape Search
Search over 800,000 sites organized into more than 140,000 categories and reviewed by over 16,000 subject experts.

Northern Light
One of the largest Web indexes, Northern light features a unique results format, organizing results into folders of related sites.

Open Directory Project
Links to more than 1,200,000 web sites, collected and organized by more than 20,000 volunteer editors worldwide, with more than 3,000 new sites added daily.

RealNames
RealNames uses Internet Keywords to simply type in the name of a company, brand, or products and go to that Web page.

Snap
Snap, owned by NBC, features search and a wide range of proprietary content and customization features.

Webcrawler
Webcrawler is Excite's "little brother," useful but by far the smallest of the major search engines, with only 2 million pages indexed.

Yahoo!
The most popular Web directory. Its directory format makes subject search easy. Also offers specialized searches for timely news, stock quotes, classifieds, etc. Worldwide: Asia, Australia & NZ, Canada, China, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Norway, Spanish, Sweden, UK & Ireland.