Searching the Internet
Looking for information on the Internet? The following list contains information compiled from search engine, directory, and specialized search engine websites that will assist you in determining which site best meets your needs. If you would like comprehensive, comparative information on Search Engines, see Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Showdown or Search Engines 101.
Most searching is based on the basic principles of Boolean
logic using AND, OR, and NOT. To learn more about Boolean searching, see
the handout Boolean
Searching on the Internet.
All the Web(a.k.a. FastSearch)
All the Web's catalog contains over 600 million full-text documents. All the Web's index is built by sending out crawlers (robot programs) that capture text and bring it back. When you search, you will locate HTML documents, pictures, video, and audio sites.
Search Hints:
| +america +history | Use the "+" (plus) sign to designate words that must be contained in your search results. |
| +america -history | Use the "-" (minus) sign to designate words that must hot be contained in your search results. |
| "george washington" | Enclose exact phrases in quotation marks. |
| (america history) | Use parenthesis to find documents that contain one or more of the words. Equates to a boolean OR. |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help, FAQ
AltaVista indexes the full-text of Web pages. The AltaVista index is built by sending out crawlers (robot programs) that capture text and bring it back. No human filtering or judgment is involved. AltaVista uses ranking algorithms to determine the order in which matching documents are displayed on the Search results page. Each document gets a grade based on many factors, including how many of the search terms it contains, where the words are located in the document, and how close they are to each other.
Search Hints:
| Finds documents that contain
both george and washington, including capitalized variants.
When you do not include a plus ("+") or minus ("-") in front of any of the terms, the terms are interpreted as having a plus in front of each of them. In this example, "george washington" is equivalent to the "+george +washington" example below. |
|
| George Washington | Finds documents that have both George and Washington but not any other capitalized variation. When you use a capitalized word, AltaVista assumes that you are only interested in an exact match. |
| +america +history | Use the "+" (plus) sign to designate words that must be contained in your search results. |
| +america history | By using the "+" (plus) sign, all documents found must contain the word america or any capitalized variant. Documents that contain the word history are ranked higher in the list than documents that do not contain history. |
| +america -history | Use the "-" (minus) sign to designate words that must hot be contained in your search results. |
| +americ* +history | Use an "*" (asterisk) when you're not sure how a word is spelled or to find variations of the word. |
| "george washington" | Enclose exact phrases in quotation marks. |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help, FAQ
Ask Jeeves is considered a "natural language" search engine. Meaning, you can type in a question using "plain english" and retrieve relevant documents. Ask Jeeves maintains a proprietary knowledge base compiled by resident human editors. In addition to these sites, Ask Jeeves' search technology analyzes millions of previous Internet user choices to determine the most relevant sites to answer a specific question.
Search Hints:
| Use plain English. | Either ask your question in a complete sentence (Where can I read a review of the film Titanic?) or in a short phrase (the film Titanic) or word (Titanic). |
| Keep it simple. | Avoid using overly complex sentences, such as "Where can I find a list of phone numbers for all of my travel needs in visiting the Mid-Atlantic region?" Contact information should appear on tourism or travel company sites—you don’t need to ask for phone numbers specifically. Also, the phrase "Mid-Atlantic" is too vague; specify a state or two. Try "New York tourist information" instead. |
| Spelling is important. | If you aren’t getting the results you want, double-check the spelling of the words in your question. |
| Search for one thing at a time. | If you ask about keeping ducks, deer and raccoons out of your garden, you probably won’t find all of this information on a single page or site. Start by asking about ducks or broaden your request to ask about "wildlife." If you still can’t find answers, broaden the question even further to ask, "Where can I learn about ducks?" |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
Collection of Special Search Engines
Generally academic in scope, the Collection of Special Search
Engines links to subject specific search engines and searchable
directories, which in a number of cases can be used as an alternative for the
big search engines like Northern Light,
Hotbot, AltaVista,
and Excite. Most of them are
discipline or subject-specific, others are collections of national or regional
search engines. There is a "Contents" listing on the left to find the
subjects with searchable databases. Generally academic in scope.
Excite analyzes the 330 million documents in the Excite search index to select the most relevant and popular Web pages to match any query. To return these results, Excite Search reviews the information content of the Web pages, their meta-tags, referring anchor text, and link popularity.
Search Hints:
| america AND history | Use an uppercase AND between terms to find documents that include america and history. |
| america OR history | Use an uppercase OR between terms to find documents that include america or history. |
| america NOT history | Use an uppercase AND between terms to find documents that include america but not history. |
| +america +history | Use the "+" (plus) sign to designate words that must be contained in your search results. |
| +america -history | Use the "-" (minus) sign to designate words that must hot be contained in your search results. |
| "george washington" | Enclose exact phrases in quotation marks. |
| Parentheses are used to group portions of Boolean queries together for more complicated queries. For example, to find documents that contain the word "history" and either the word "america" or the word "US." |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
Galaxy is a searchable Internet directory. Galaxy employs technology and "Internet Librarians" to organize information in it’s directory. As part of this process, they eliminate adult content, hate sites, and sites with little or no content of value.
Search Hints:
| america AND history | Use an uppercase AND between terms to find documents that include america and history. |
| america OR history | Use an uppercase OR between terms to find documents that include america or history. |
| america NOT history | Use an uppercase AND between terms to find documents that include america but not history. |
| +america +history | Use the "+" (plus) sign to designate words that must be contained in your search results. |
| +america -history | Use the "-" (minus) sign to designate words that must hot be contained in your search results. |
| "george washington" | Enclose exact phrases in quotation marks. |
| Parentheses are used to group portions of Boolean queries together for more complicated queries. For example, to find documents that contain the word "history" and either the word "america" or the word "US." | |
| title: "george washington" | title: will restrict searches to document titles only. |
| body: "george washington" | body: will restrict searches to document body only. |
| image: "george washington" | image: will restrict searches to document titles only. |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
GoTo generates search results by allowing advertisers to bid for placement in the company's search results only on keywords that are relevant to their Web sites. Each company bids for priority placement in search results that then appear on tens of thousands of Web sites across the Internet. GoTo's paid search results appear ranked in descending order of bid price.
Search Hints:
| Click on a keyword link | There are several keyword links (like "Travel") that you can click on and you'll instantly be taken to a set of results. |
| Type a keyword into the search box | You may also type a keyword(s) (like "Sporting Goods"), that describe what you're looking for, into the search box. |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
Google uses link popularity to rank web pages. Link popularity means that Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. Google combines link popularity with text-matching techniques to find pages that are relevant to your search. Google examines the page's content (and the content of the pages linking to it) to determine if it's a match for your query.
Search Hints:
| By default, Google only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms. | |
| america OR history | Use an uppercase OR between terms to find documents that include america or history. |
| Google ignores common words and characters, known as stop words. These terms such as "where" and "how", as well as certain single digits and single letters, are not included in searches unless you indicate that they are essential. | |
| +america +history | Use the "+" (plus) sign to designate words that must be contained in your search results. |
| +america -history | Use the "-" (minus) sign to designate words that must hot be contained in your search results. |
| Google searches are not case
sensitive. For example, searches for "george washington",
"George Washington", and "gEoRgE wAsHiNgToN" will all return the same results. |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help, FAQ
GPO Access is a service of the U.S. Government Printing Office that provides free electronic access to information products produced by the Federal Government.
Search Hints:
| america AND history | Use an uppercase AND between terms to find documents that include america and history. |
| america OR history | Use an uppercase OR between terms to find documents that include america or history. |
| "george washington" | Enclose exact phrases in quotation marks. |
| Use an "*" (asterisk) when you're not sure how a word is spelled or to find variations of the word. | |
| By checking the "Advanced options" you can limit your search to: case (in)sensitvity, keywords match on word boundaries, number of errors allowed and display options |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
Highway 61 is a "metacrawler". Your search will be sent to a number of Internet search engines and the results will be compiled into a single page. Currently, searches are submitted to Yahoo, Lycos, Webcrawler, Go.com and Excite. The results rankings are based on: how many sites a link was found at and how those sites ranked it.
Search Hints:
| america AND history | Use an uppercase AND between terms to find documents that include america and history. |
| america OR history | Use an uppercase OR between terms to find documents that include america or history. |
| +america +history | Use the "+" (plus) sign to designate words that must be contained in your search results. |
| +america -history | Use the "-" (minus) sign to designate words that must hot be contained in your search results. |
| "Your patience level" | There is a drop down menu box that you can choose the amount of time you want a search to take. Generally, the longer you are willing to wait, the greater the number of hits you'll receive. |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
HotBot, part of the Lycos Network, searches the full-text of the more than 110 million documents in its database, finding all documents that fit your criteria, sorts them according to their relevance, and returns a list of documents in the form of abstracts and hyperlinks. HotBot also has the "Hotbot Directory", which is a manually compiled Web site directory, indexed by subject. It is organized according to general, top-level categories moving to more specific narrow ones. Editors review and maintain sites in the Directory within their subject areas of expertise.
Search Hints:
| By using additional keywords, you will be able to locate documents that are better related to your search. | |
| By default, HotBot displays documents containing all the words in your search query. (Note: This is the equivalent of a Boolean AND search.) By setting the main search pull down menu to "any of the words," you'll find documents that contain as few as one of your requested words (a Boolean OR search). | |
| Use exact phrases. This type of search may be done in one of two ways, by either selecting "exact phrase" from the search pull down menu or simply enclosing your phrase in double quotes (" "). |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
A full-text index of library-related electronic serials.
Search Hints:
| america AND history | Use an uppercase AND between terms to find documents that include america and history. |
| america OR history | Use an uppercase OR between terms to find documents that include america or history. |
| "george washington" | Enclose exact phrases in quotation marks. |
| Parentheses are used to group portions of Boolean queries together for more complicated queries. For example, to find documents that contain the word "history" and either the word "america" or the word "US." | |
| americ* | Use an "*" (asterisk) when you're not sure how a word is spelled or to find variations of the word. |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
Librarians' Index to the Internet (LII)
The Librarians' Index to the Internet (LII) is a searchable, annotated subject directory of more than 8,500 Internet resources selected and evaluated by librarians for their usefulness to users of public libraries. LII is meant to be used by both librarians and non-librarians as a reliable and efficient guide to described and evaluated Internet resources.
Search Hints:
| By default, LII only returns pages that include all of your search terms. There is no need to include "and" between terms. | |
| america OR history | Use an uppercase OR between terms to find documents that include america or history. |
| america NOT history | Use an uppercase AND between terms to find documents that include america but not history. |
| A stemming algorithm is used to aid in searches.
This is often helpful for finding singular and plural forms of words, but
may also return seemingly unrelated results. For example, the word
"authorize" stems to "author."
To turn off stemming, click on the No Stemming checkbox. |
|
| americ* | Use an "*" ( asterisk) when you're not sure how a word is spelled or to find variations of the word. |
| Parentheses are used to group portions of Boolean queries together for more complicated queries. For example, to find documents that contain the word "history" and either the word "america" or the word "U.S." |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
Looksmart's directory links to more than 1 million Web sites. The directory is updated every day by a staff of editors who look for the best information on the Web. Each site is reviewed for quality and placed into one of more than 70,000 categories. In addition to the directory, Looksmart gives you access to an index of more than 100 million pages through their search partners.
Search Hints:
| Type a word or phrase into the bar in the yellow search panel and click on Search. Don't worry about using plus and minus signs, quotation marks, asterisks, or any other symbol to narrow your search. Boolean operators are not necessary when searching with LookSmart. | |
| Browse the LookSmart database by topic and to find Web sites in related areas. Point and click to find a list of sites selected by our editors. The most relevant sites are listed first, and everything else appears in alphabetical order. |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
Lycos searches millions of pages across the Web. Lycos gathers a list of Web pages that matches your search terms and organizes all that information on the Search Results page. The results are sorted into three main sections: Web Sites, News Articles, and Shopping.
Search Hints:
| america AND history | Use an uppercase AND between terms to find documents that include america and history. |
| america OR history | Use an uppercase OR between terms to find documents that include america or history. |
| +america +history | Use the "+" (plus) sign to designate words that must be contained in your search results. |
| +america -history | Use the "-" (minus) sign to designate words that must hot be contained in your search results. |
| "george washington" | Enclose exact phrases in quotation marks. |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
Open Directory Project relies on volunteer editors
to create a directory of the web.
Search Hints:
|
america history
|
All searches use AND as the
default linking operator between all of the search terms.
|
|
america AND history
|
Use an uppercase AND between
terms to find documents that include america and history.
|
|
america OR history
|
Use an uppercase OR between
terms to find documents that include america or history.
|
|
america ANDNOT history
|
Use an uppercase ANDNOT
between terms to find documents that include america but not history.
|
|
+america +history
|
Use the "+" (plus)
sign to designate words that must be contained in your search
results.
|
|
+america -history
|
Use the "-" (minus)
sign to designate words that must hot be contained in your search
results.
|
|
"george washington"
|
Enclose exact phrases in
quotation marks.
|
|
+americ* +history
|
Use an "*" (
asterisk) when you're not sure how a word is spelled or to find
variations of the word.
|
|
Metasearch
|
MetaSearch lets you search
query many different search engines, while only having to type your
query once. When you search, a "MetaSearch" bar appears at the
bottom of the search results page. Clicking on one of the links will
forward your query to another search engine, so you don't have to type
it again
|
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help, FAQ
Overture generates search results by allowing advertisers to bid for placement in the company's search results only on keywords that are relevant to their Web sites. Each company bids for priority placement in search results that then appear on tens of thousands of Web sites across the Internet. Overtures's paid search results appear ranked in descending order of bid price.
Search Hints:
| Click on a keyword link | There are several keyword links (like "Travel") that you can click on and you'll instantly be taken to a set of results. |
| Type a keyword into the search box | You may also type a keyword(s) (like "Sporting Goods"), that describe what you're looking for, into the search box. |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
Teoma uses Subject-Specific PopularitySM to determine the authority or quality of a site's content. Subject-Specific Popularity ranks a site based on the number of same-subject pages that reference it, not just general popularity, to determine a site's level of authority.
Search Hints:
| +america +history | Use the "+" (plus) sign to designate words that must be contained in your search results. |
| +america -history | Use the "-" (minus) sign to designate words that must hot be contained in your search results. |
| "george washington" | Enclose exact phrases in quotation marks. |
| george-washington | Use a dash without spaces to specify a phrase. |
Additional search help and/or FAQ:Help
Search Hints:
| america AND history | Use an uppercase AND between terms to find documents that include america and history. |
| america OR history | Use an uppercase OR between terms to find documents that include america or history. |
| america NOT history | Use an uppercase AND between terms to find documents that include america but not history. |
| Parentheses are used to group portions of Boolean queries together for more complicated queries. For example, to find documents that contain the word "history" and either the word "america" or the word "U.S." | |
| Use the drop down menu when
searching the World Wide Web with Virtual library to limit to:
All - All of the words in the search field matched in the
retrieved documents. OR Any - Any of the words in the search field matched in the retrieved documents. |
|
| Use the drop down menu when
searching the World Wide Web with Virtual library to limit to: Long -
Displays the titles, relevant excerpt text, date of last modification and
size of the matching pages. Short - Displays just the page titles. |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
WebCrawler searches an index of the Web rather than the Web itself. WebCrawler works by starting with a known set of documents (even if it is just one), identifying new places to explore by looking at the outbound links from that document, and then visiting those links.
Search Hints:
| Use natural language queries. | |
| america AND history | Use an uppercase AND between terms to find documents that include america and history. |
| america OR history | Use an uppercase OR between terms to find documents that include america or history. |
| america NOT history | Use an uppercase AND between terms to find documents that include america but not history. |
| +america +history | Use the "+" (plus) sign to designate words that must be contained in your search results. |
| +america -history | Use the "-" (minus) sign to designate words that must hot be contained in your search results. |
| "george washington" | Enclose exact phrases in quotation marks. |
| Parentheses are used to group portions of Boolean queries together for more complicated queries. For example, to find documents that contain the word "history" and either the word "america" or the word "US." |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
Yahoo's directory is created by a staff of
editors who visit and evaluate web sites, and then organize them into
subject-based categories and sub-categories.
Search Hints:
| +america +history | Use the "+" (plus) sign to designate words that must be contained in your search results. |
| +america -history | Use the "-" (minus) sign to designate words that must hot be contained in your search results. |
| "george washington" | Enclose exact phrases in quotation marks. |
| +americ* +history | Use an "*" ( asterisk) when you're not sure how a word is spelled or to find variations of the word. |
| t:george washington | t: - will restrict searches to document titles only. |
| u:george washington | u: - will restrict searches to document URLs only. |
Additional search help and/or FAQ: Help
Amy Stahl, Reference Librarian, Wichita State University Libraries
Updated 4/15/02