Search Engines, Directories, and Tools

REVIEWS AND EVALUATIVE INFORMATION FOR SEARCH ENGINES AND RESOURCES

Some search engines may accept payment from companies and organizations for prominent placement of their sites in the search result list. Therefore the order of result listings may reflect a company or organization’s willingness and ability to pay rather than the merits of that particular site’s information. Be aware of the pay for placement practice of some search engines. An indication that a site might have paid for placement is the “sponsored by,” “featured sites,” and “partners listings” notes linking you to the company site. Also be aware that popularity or ranking by number of links does not ensure quality of information.

The following reviews will provide information to help you evaluate various search engines:

http://www.abacon.com/compsite/resources/index.html
Allyn & Bacon's web site provides guidelines for evaluation and use of Internet resources.

http://SearchEngineShowdown.com
Provides reviews of search engines and directories and information on coverage, strengths, and weaknesses.

http://SearchEngineWatch.com
Provides reviews of search engines and directories and information on coverage, strengths, and weaknesses. Provides information on search strategies and related articles.

DIRECTORIES:

http://www.lycos.com
Search the directory by topic or perform searches utilizing Fast Search.

http://www.yahoo.com
Yahoo!, the largest human-compiled guide to the web, classifies links into subject directories. It utilizes Google as a search engine.

http://www.about.com
"Each site in our unique network is run by a professional Guide who is carefully screened and trained by About. Guides build a comprehensive environment around each of their specific topics, including the best new content, relevant links, how-tos, Forums, and answers to just about any question. The About network consists of over 700 Guide sites neatly organized into 36 channels."

http://www.excite.com
Excite can be searched by directory, web, news, and photos.

SEARCH ENGINES:

http://www.ask.com
"Ask is a human-powered search service that allows you to ask your question in your own words. Our ExpertRank algorithm provides relevant search results by identifying the most authoritative sites on the Web. With Ask search technology, it's not just about who's biggest: it's about who's best. Our ExpertRank algorithm goes beyond mere link popularity (which ranks pages based on the sheer volume of links pointing to a particular page) to determine popularity among pages considered to be experts on the topic of your search. This is known as subject-specific popularity. Identifying topics (also known as "clusters"), the experts on those topics, and the popularity of millions of pages amongst those experts -- at the exact moment your search query is conducted -- requires many additional calculations that other search engines do not perform. The result is world-class relevance that often offers a unique editorial flavor compared to other search engines."

http://www.google.com
Google ranks relevance of web sites based on link popularity and authority. Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query. Google is the only general search engine that provides access to pages at the time they were indexed. Google's Image Search is the most comprehensive on the Web."

http://www.alltheweb.com
FAST Search, also known as All the Web, consistently has one of the largest indexes of the web. Search by using all of the words, any of the words, or exact phrase.”

http://AltaVista.com
AltaVista has a large database of indexed web pages. Search by terms or by category in the directory. It checks the search terms against a recognized phrase dictionary to enhance search results. Duplicate results from site pages are eliminated. Media/Topic Search provides searching for multimedia resources – images, online videos, and audio, including MP3 files.

METASEARCH:

http://www.copernic.com/products/copernic/basic/index.html
"Copernic 2001 Basic, a desktop search tool, is a free download. This version targets scores of information sources and provides relevant, valid results in seconds. Copernic 2001 Basic gives one-click access to the 80 search engines grouped into 7 categories including AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos, WebCrawler and Yahoo!, and offers a ranking method that places the most relevant result at the top of a result report generated in seconds and free of duplicates."

http://www.dogpile.com
Dogpile allows the user to construct a custom search of search engines. It divides search results by search engines.

http://www.hotbot.com
Part of the Lycos network, ranks search results by relevance. Links to Lycos.

http://www.ixquick.com
"Meta search engine that ranks results based on the number of 'top 10' rankings a site receives from the various search engines."

http://www.mamma.com
"Mamma.com, The Mother of All Search Engines, is a smart meta search engine. When the user enters a query at the Mamma.com web site, Mamma's powerful proprietary technology simultaneously queries 10 of the major Search Engines and properly formats the words and syntax for each source being probed. Mamma then creates a virtual database, organizes the results into a uniform format and presents them by relevance and source. In this manner, Mamma.com provides the end user with a highly relevant and comprehensive set of search results."

http://www.metacrawler.com
Search by word, phrase, or by subject in the directory. Results are ranked by relevance.

http://www.webcrawler.com
Search by terms or by subject in the directory.

	Search Engines, Directories, and Tools REVIEWS AND EVALUATIVE INFORMATION FOR SEARCH ENGINES AND RESOURCES Some search engines may accept payment from companies and organizations for prominent placement of their sites in the search result list. Therefore the order of result listings may reflect a company or organization’s willingness and ability to pay rather than the merits of that particular site’s information. Be aware of the pay for placement practice of some search engines. An indication that a site might have paid for placement is the “sponsored by,” “featured sites,” and “partners listings” notes linking you to the company site. Also be aware that popularity or ranking by number of links does not ensure quality of information. The following reviews will provide information to help you evaluate various search engines: http://www.abacon.com/compsite/resources/index.html Allyn & Bacon's web site provides guidelines for evaluation and use of Internet resources. http://SearchEngineShowdown.com Provides reviews of search engines and directories and information on coverage, strengths, and weaknesses. http://SearchEngineWatch.com Provides reviews of search engines and directories and information on coverage, strengths, and weaknesses. Provides information on search strategies and related articles. DIRECTORIES: http://www.lycos.com Search the directory by topic or perform searches utilizing Fast Search. http://www.yahoo.com Yahoo!, the largest human-compiled guide to the web, classifies links into subject directories. It utilizes Google as a search engine. http://www.about.com "Each site in our unique network is run by a professional Guide who is carefully screened and trained by About. Guides build a comprehensive environment around each of their specific topics, including the best new content, relevant links, how-tos, Forums, and answers to just about any question. The About network consists of over 700 Guide sites neatly organized into 36 channels." http://www.excite.com Excite can be searched by directory, web, news, and photos. SEARCH ENGINES: http://www.ask.com "Ask is a human-powered search service that allows you to ask your question in your own words. Our ExpertRank algorithm provides relevant search results by identifying the most authoritative sites on the Web. With Ask search technology, it's not just about who's biggest: it's about who's best. Our ExpertRank algorithm goes beyond mere link popularity (which ranks pages based on the sheer volume of links pointing to a particular page) to determine popularity among pages considered to be experts on the topic of your search. This is known as subject-specific popularity. Identifying topics (also known as "clusters"), the experts on those topics, and the popularity of millions of pages amongst those experts -- at the exact moment your search query is conducted -- requires many additional calculations that other search engines do not perform. The result is world-class relevance that often offers a unique editorial flavor compared to other search engines." http://www.google.com Google ranks relevance of web sites based on link popularity and authority. Important, high-quality sites receive a higher PageRank, which Google remembers each time it conducts a search. Of course, important pages mean nothing to you if they don't match your query. So, Google combines PageRank with sophisticated text-matching techniques to find pages that are both important and relevant to your search. Google goes far beyond the number of times a term appears on a page and examines all aspects of the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a good match for your query. Google is the only general search engine that provides access to pages at the time they were indexed. Google's Image Search is the most comprehensive on the Web." http://www.alltheweb.com FAST Search, also known as All the Web, consistently has one of the largest indexes of the web. Search by using all of the words, any of the words, or exact phrase.” http://AltaVista.com AltaVista has a large database of indexed web pages. Search by terms or by category in the directory. It checks the search terms against a recognized phrase dictionary to enhance search results. Duplicate results from site pages are eliminated. Media/Topic Search provides searching for multimedia resources – images, online videos, and audio, including MP3 files. METASEARCH: http://www.copernic.com/products/copernic/basic/index.html "Copernic 2001 Basic, a desktop search tool, is a free download. This version targets scores of information sources and provides relevant, valid results in seconds. Copernic 2001 Basic gives one-click access to the 80 search engines grouped into 7 categories including AltaVista, Excite, HotBot, Infoseek, Lycos, WebCrawler and Yahoo!, and offers a ranking method that places the most relevant result at the top of a result report generated in seconds and free of duplicates." http://www.dogpile.com Dogpile allows the user to construct a custom search of search engines. It divides search results by search engines. http://www.hotbot.com Part of the Lycos network, ranks search results by relevance. Links to Lycos. http://www.ixquick.com "Meta search engine that ranks results based on the number of 'top 10' rankings a site receives from the various search engines." http://www.mamma.com "Mamma.com, The Mother of All Search Engines, is a smart meta search engine. When the user enters a query at the Mamma.com web site, Mamma's powerful proprietary technology simultaneously queries 10 of the major Search Engines and properly formats the words and syntax for each source being probed. Mamma then creates a virtual database, organizes the results into a uniform format and presents them by relevance and source. In this manner, Mamma.com provides the end user with a highly relevant and comprehensive set of search results." http://www.metacrawler.com Search by word, phrase, or by subject in the directory. Results are ranked by relevance. http://www.webcrawler.com Search by terms or by subject in the directory.
	Home \| About LSB \| Continuing Education \| Career Programs \| Departments \| Student Resources \| Contact Us Copyright © 2010 Lansdale School of Business. All Rights Reserved No information may be duplicated without the permission of the Lansdale School of Business 290 Wissahickon Avenue, North Wales, PA 19454