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AlltheWeb
(www.alltheweb.com)
Indexes web pages, news, picyures, videos and audio files. Searches may be conducted in 36 different languages. Their news search indexes hundreds of stories every minute.
Uses the Yahoo! web index.
Tool Bar Available? No.
Advanced Search:
Boolean Language: No.
Filters: Yes (site, domain, url, link, title, language, filetype, and date).
Updated 2 March 2008.
AltaVista
(www.altavista.com)
In 1995 AltaVista was the first web index service available to the public. Now a business unit of Overture Services, Inc. they provide searches of web pages, images, MP3 & audio files, video, directory and news.
Uses the Yahoo! web index.
Tool Bar Available? No.
Advanced Search:
Boolean Language: No.
Filters: Yes (language, date range, time frame, file type, domain & url).
Updated 4 March 2008.
AOL Search
(search.aol.com)
AOL Search provides indexes to web pages, images, shopping, news, jobs (via CareerBuilder), movies, music, personnels (via Match.com - sign-in required), travel, yellow pages and geographic specific pages. Video is also available if you have an AIM or AOL screen name.
Uses the dmoz Open Directory & Google web index.
Tool Bar Available? Yes.
Advanced Search:
Boolean Language: No.
Filters: Yes (language, file format, relative date, usage rights, linking pages, similar pages & domain).
Updated 4 March 2008.
Ask
(www.ask.com)
Formerly Ask Jeeves (which used a natural language interface) Ask provides indexes to the web, images, news, blogs, video, shopping, and localities. Despite rumors in march 2008, Ask is not poised to become a search engine just for women. Ask Jeeves was launched in 1996.
Powered by the Teoma search engine.
Tool Bar Available? No.
Advanced Search:
Boolean Language: No.
Filters: Yes (language (6), country, relative date, & domain).
Updated 20 March 2008
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Choosing a Search Engine
(www.noodletools.com/debbie/literacies/information/5locate/adviceengine.html)
If you're overwhelmed by the number of search engine choices, try this resource. It will help you choose the best search engine for your particular needs.
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Dogpile
(www.dogpile.com)
Dogpile is a metasearch engine - A search engine that searches search engines. Dogpile will search Google, Yahoo! Search, Live Search, Ask.com, About, MIVA, and LookSmart and "fetch" the best results from the combined pool of the best search engines. You may search indexes of web pages, images, audio, video, news, yellow pages and white pages. Dogpile was launched in 1996.
Searches Google, Yahoo! Search, Live Search, Ask.com, About, MIVA, and LookSmart.
Tool Bar Available? Yes.
Advanced Search:
Boolean Language: No.
Filters: Yes (language (10) & domain).
Updated 20 March 2008
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Excite
(msxml.excite.com/info.xcite/)
Excite is a metasearch engine - A search engine that searches search engines - although they barely acknowledge this. Excite and Dogpile are both owned by the same company and, given the similarity of the two sites, we suspect that they use the same sources for meta searches. You may search indexes of web pages, images, audio, video, news, yellow pages and white pages.
Tool Bar Available? No.
Advanced Search:
Boolean Language: No.
Filters: Yes (language (10), date range, adult content, & domain).
Updated 20 March 2008
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Go
(www.go.com)
The Go web site states that the search results are provided by both Google and Overture. Frankly we can't see any reason to use this search engine unless you just happened to be on their page.
Advanced Search:
None.
4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards (2003)
None.
Google
(www.google.com)
Google's technology ranks every website's importance based on which other sites link to it. They look at what others on the web have found useful enough to link to and return those pages first. Their methodology enables them to index a page without actually visiting the page. Google indexes web pages, shopping (Froggle), catalogs, groups (usenet), images, news, universities and directories. You can also create your own blog, hire someone to do research for you (Google Answers), and play with new toys in the Google Lab.
Advanced Search:
Boolean: No.
Filters: Yes (language, file format, date, domain & Safe Search).
4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards (2003)
First Place: Outstanding Search Service.
First Place: Best News Search Engine.
First Place: Best Image Search Engine.
First Place: Best Design.
First Place: Best Search Toolbar.
Second Place: Best Shopping Search Engine.
Grokker
(www.groxis.com)
Grokker is meta-search application which provides an interface to AltaVista, MSN, WiseNut, Fast, Yahoo, and Teoma. It comes with a browser built into it, but needs Internet Explorer to be installed. When you enter search terms, Grokker creates a visual map, displaying nested clusters of similar web sites. This visual approach is easy to use once you've spent a short time with the software. You will quickly find web pages with high relavency. This does come at a price, however, of $49. Given all of the fine search engines which are available for free, it seems a bit bold to expect someone to pay to use this meta-search engine. But for better results, it may be worth it.
Advanced Search:
Boolean: No.
Filters: Yes (keywords, rank, top level domain & search engine source).
4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards (2003)
None.
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HotBot
(www.hotbot.com)
HotBot is owned by Lycos and draws it's query results from Inktomi, Lycos and dmoz. You can search only for web pages with HotBot.
Advanced Search:
Boolean: No.
Filters: Yes (language, domain, region, word, date range, content type).
4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards (2003)
None.
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Ixquick Metasearch
(www.ixquick.com)
This meta search engine (a search engine that searches search engines) uses proprietary technology to simultaneously query ten major search engines then properly formats the words and syntax for each source being probed. IxQuick then creates a virtual database, organizes the results into a uniform format and presents them by relevance and source. You can conduct searches for web pages, MP3, news and pictures. Advanced searching is done within the save search box as a basic search. You can even enter a natural language query.
Advanced Search:
Boolean: Yes (and, or, not & near).
Filters: Yes (title, domain, host, image, url, link, text, & related).
4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards (2003)
None.
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Lycos
(www.lycos.com)
Lycos provides indexes to web pages, shopping, news & pictures. They are the power behind some other engines.
Advanced Search:
Boolean: No.
Filters: Yes (word, url, language, adult material, and catalog).
4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards (2003)
None.
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MSN Search
(search.msn.com)
MSN Search offers a web directory and web indexing searches.
Advanced Search:
Boolean: Yes (and, or & not).
Filters: Yes (links, region, language, domain, directory depth, file type & extension type).
4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards (2003)
None.
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Netscape Search
(search.netscape.com)
Netscape offers a directory service through dmoz (Open Directory Project) and a web index powered by Google.
Advanced Search:
Boolean: Yes (or).
Filters: Yes (intitle & site).
4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards (2003)
None.
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Open Directory Project
(dmoz.org)
The Open Directory Project is the largest, most comprehensive human-edited directory of the Web. It is constructed and maintained by a global community of volunteer editors. Many of today's search engines pull information from this database including All the Web, AltaVista, Gigablast, Google, HotBot, Lycos, Teoma, WiseNut and Yahoo.
Advanced Search:
Boolean: Yes (and, or & andnot).
Filters: Yes (category, search areas & kids and teens sites).
4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards (2003)
None.
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WebBrain
(www.webbrain.com)
WebBrain lets you search the Web visually, so you can explore a dynamic picture of related information, instead of searching through long lists of text. They create text clusters of related pages that you can drill down through. They draw upon the dmox Open Directory Project for their search results. You can search web indexes only. Note: WebBrain requires that you permit a java applet to run in your browser.
Advanced Search:
Boolean: No.
Filters: No.
4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards (2003)
None.
WebCrawler
(www.webcrawler.com)
WebCrawler is a meta search engine - A search engine that searches search engines. WebCrawler, Excite and Dogpile are all owned by Infospace and, given the similarity of the three sites, we suspect that they use the same sources for meta searches. You may search indexes of web pages, news and photos.
Advanced Search:
Boolean: Yes (and, or & andnot).
Filters: Yes (date range, domain, adult material & language).
4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards (2003)
None.
WiseNut
(www.wisenut.com)
WiseNut is a LookSmart search engine. You may search only on web page indexes.
Advanced Search:
Boolean: No.
Filters: No.
4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards (2003)
None.
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Yahoo!
(www.yahoo.com)
Yahoo! was the first web directory service. You may search web indexes, images, yellow pages and products.
Advanced Search:
Boolean: No.
Filters: Yes (fate, domain, file type, mature content, country, & language).
4th Annual Search Engine Watch Awards (2003)
First Place: Best Shopping Search Engine
Second Place: Outstanding Search Service.
Second Place: Best News Search Engine.
Second Place: Best Design.
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