Global Mapping International
Internet Search Engines
General Searching |
HotBot |
AltaVista |
Yahoo! |
Northern Light |
Infoseek |
Lycos |
Excite |
c|net Search |
LookSmart |
Mining Co. |
Direct Hit |
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Metasearch |
ProFusion |
MetaCrawler |
Dogpile |
SavvySearch |
Ask Jeeves |
Finding People |
Four11 |
InfoSpace |
Worldpages |
WhoWhere |
Switchboard |
Finding Businesses |
BigBook |
Switchboard |
Worldpages |
InfoSpace |
Zip2 |
Christian Sites |
Christianity.Net |
CrossSearch |
GOSHEN |
Great Commission |
Religious Resources |
Usenet Newsgroups |
Deja News |
Reference.com |
HotBot |
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Special Interest |
WWW
Virtual Library |
Library
of Congress |
United
Nations |
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Lists of Engines/Directories |
Matsuoka's
Collection |
Beaucoup! |
Internets |
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More on Internet Searching |
How to Search the Web |
Search Engines |
How Search Engines Work |
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Listing your Site |
Submit It! |
Webstep Top 100 |
TopSites |
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Today hundreds of search engines exist on the
web (see the section on Lists of
Directories/Engines below). We've tried below to point you to some
of the best in each category. Chances are good you'll find what you're
looking for with one of these tools.
General Searching
Here are some of the very best general purpose
search engines and directories. They are powerful, easy-to-use, extensive
and frequently updated. Search engines produce the result of exhaustive
automated computer searches, while good directories require painstaking
human review and cataloging.
- HotBot Probably the single most
powerful search engine, HotBot is a no-frills site, great for detailed
queries, and with excellent current news searching. You can easily search
by date or by geographic region (e.g. only Southeast Asian sites) or by
top-level domain (e.g., search only for ".org" web sites).
http://hotbot.lycos.com/
- AltaVista This is the grand-daddy
of search engines, always innovating. It is powerful, extremely flexible,
fast, and comprehensive. You can quickly do a simple search, or invest
some time in learning advanced search syntax. You can tell it to search
only for sites in Korean or any of 25 other languages. Also, you might
find their Translation
feature handy at http://babelfish.altavista.com/translate.dyn
-- it gives a quick and dirty translation of web site content to or from
English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German and Italian. http://altavista.com/
- Yahoo! Currently
the best directory on the Internet, Yahoo! is serious about tying to be
everything you need. It must hire some of the best reviewers and catalogers
in the business; its links are consistently high-quality. It is great source
to search for current news items, and its just-for-kids Yahooligians! is
lots of fun. http://www.yahoo.com/
- Northern Light A relative
new-comer, Northern Light became an instant success, and with good reason.
It is well organized -- your returns are grouped by subject, type, source
and language. It does a great job of sifting down from the 1000s of hits
to the ones you want. You can also search in special collections (including
some 3000 periodicals) not generally available on the Web. http://www.northernlight.com/
- Infoseek
This is a good all-around site with a simple interface. It has lots of
extras including foreign-language searching and searching by geographic
region. http://www.go.com/
- Lycos
Lycos is an excellent general search site, with good options and a comprehensive
directory. http://www.lycos.com/
- Excite
Excite gives good results from simple queries and provides lots of other
nice touches and features, making it a good choice for less experience
users. http://www.excite.com/
- c|net Search http://search.cnet.com/
- LookSmart Designed for families,
LookSmart is a directory of frequently updated, staff-reviewed sites. It
is a reliable site for high-quality material. http://www.looksmart.com
- Mining Co. Volunteer experts
continually search, review, annotate and categorize sites on many topics.
http://home.miningco.com/
- Direct Hit compiles its listings
by tracking the way search engines are used. The company maintains a database
that records the links users click on when sifting through results for
a specific search term. Links drawing more clicks rank the highest on search
results pages generated by Direct Hit. http://www.directhit.com
Metasearch (Multiple Search)
For simple convenience, you might find metasearching
to be the ultimate tool for you. Rather than performing their own original
searches, metasearch engines simply compile the results of many other leading
search engines all in one place. Thus, with one query you can get a quick
overview (though usually not thorough listing) of the matches from several
search engines. The better metasearch engines will accept your query and
translate it into the required syntax of each of the engines it accesses.
- ProFusion This site has it all:
intelligence, design, speed, power and flexibility, producing the best
metasearch results on the web. Try the personalized search service: enter
your query once and ProFusion with rerun it for you weekly or monthly and
e-mail you the results. http://profusion.com
- MetaCrawler An
excellent metasearch engine, the standard by which others have historically
been measured. It is powerful and flexible, and does a great job of removing
duplicates. http://www.metacrawler.com
- Dogpile Dogpile is easy to use
and fast, searching a wide range of search engines until it obtains at
least ten hits for your query. http://www.dogpile.com
- SavvySearch
This site has great flexibility and can be highly customized to fit the
needs of the individual user. It handle very complex queries, translating
them well for the search engines it accesses. http://dns.uncor.edu/links/sitehelp/localgui/savvybet.htm
- Ask Jeeves One of the newest
sites, Ask Jeeves is also one of the most creative. To use it, you type
in a natural language question (e.g. "How do I tie a tie?")
and Ask Jeeves tries (usually with surprising successes) to interpret your
question point you to links it suspects will be helpful -- from AltaVista,
Excite, Infosek, Lycos and Webcrawler. http://www.askjeeves.com
Finding People
Need to find someone's address, telephone number or e-mail address?
Unless they work pretty hard to hide, you'll probably find them with one
of these search engines.
- Four11 This site is probably
the best place to start looking for someone. Their SmartName feature will
find variations of a given name (e.g. returning Bill for William). They
were recently acquired by Yahoo! http://people.yahoo.com/
- InfoSpace
InfoSpace includes lots of nice features: dial a phone number, display
a map with directions to a street address, or display a local city guide.
http://www.infospace.com/_1_4INOUIZ04JUUBPJ__info/index_ppl.htm?
- Worldpages This
is the best place to go if you're looking for someone outside the USA,
with 230 directories from 100 countries. http://www.worldpages.com/whitepages/
- WhoWhere This site gives
you excellent control over your search and return criteria. http://www.whowhere.lycos.com/
- Switchboard
A good directory site, but not as comprehensive or well developed as the
ones above. http://www.switchboard.com/bin/cgiqa.dll?MG=
Finding Businesses
- BigBook For many people, this
will be the best site for finding a business. It is comprehensive and accurate,
with good user helps. It does a nice job of proximity searching -- finding
the businesses closest to a specified address. Having found an address,
you can then link to a map of the area. http://www.bigbook.com
- Switchboard
This is an excellent site for finding businesses, with many of the same
features as BigBook. http://www.switchboard.com/bin/cgidir.dll?MG=
- Zip2 Zip2 is probably the most enjoyable
to use -- it has a nice feel, and gives good results (except it is weak
in proximity searching). http://www.zip2.com
- Worldpages Worldpages has helpful
maps and lots of useful categories to search. A good site, but not as comprehensive
as BigBook or Switchboard. http://www.worldpages.com
- InfoSpace
This another good site with features similar to the ones above, but less
user-friendly and with less-helpful categories. http://pic2.infospace.com/_1_185412589__info/index_ylw.htm
Usenet Newsgroups
Search engines for Usenet newsgroups, not only current conversations,
but extensive archives of newsgroup content.
- Deja News At Deja News you can
search for and read messages from more than 50,000 discussion forums, including
Usenet newsgroups. You can search messages dating back more than two years,
searching by author, date, newsgroup or subject. http://www.dejanews.com/
- Reference.com An excellent site,
almost as comprehensive and flexible as Deja News, plus it searches
mailing lists. You can ask Reference.com to rerun your search daily and
send you updates by e-mail; you can also send it search queries by e-mail.
http://www.reference.com
- HotBot Less comprehensive than
either of the above, HotBot indexes about 20,000 newsgroups and searches
messages up to three weeks old. http://www.hotbot.com/
Christian Search Engines & Directories
The following directories and search engines are
focues exclusively on Christian content, so when you do a search you are
assured of finding hits on Christian (or religious) web pages only.
- Christianity.Net This is
one of the leading search engines for Christian information and resources
on the Net. Sponsored by Christianity Today, Inc., it is well executed
and professionally run http://www.christianity.net/
- CrossSearch A ministry of
Gospel Communications Network, this is perhaps the largest Christian Web
site directory. http://www.crosssearch.com
- GoSearch GOSHEN's
site includes an extensive Christian Web Directory and search engine. http://www.goshen.net/WebDirectory/
- Great Commission Hosted by SIM, this
site lists pages from over 100 Christian mission Web sites. http://www.sim.org
- Religious Resources on the
Net This is a comprehensive, searchable database of religious and Christian
web sites grouped into over 150 topics. http://www.aphids.com/relres/
- 777.net An extensive directory of
Christian resources on the web. http://www.777.net/
Special Interest Sites
While not directories or search engines, per se,
we've found these sites to be valuable reference resources.
- WWW
Virtual Library http://vlib.org/Overview.html
- Library
of Congress Their resources for researchers and information professionals
include the catalogs of the (USA) Library of Congress and other libraries,
databases on special topics, and other Library of Congress Internet resources
http://www.loc.gov/
- United
Nations The official United Nations site has UN related databases,
documents, services and news from around the world. http://www.un.org/
Lists
of Engines/Directories
Want immediate access to lots more search engines?
The pages below are links to hundreds of additional search engines and
directories.
- Matsuoka's
Collection Searching for a particular search engine? You can probably
find it in this frequently updated listing of over 200 search engines.
http://lang.nagoya-u.ac.jp/%7Ematsuoka/search.html
- Beaucoup! Beaucoup has more
than 1,000 listings of search engines, directories and indices across the
world, grouped in some 20 categories. It can be viewed in English, Dutch,
Spanish, German, Japanese and French. http://www.beaucoup.com/
- Internets This site includes
access to a huge collection of news sources and archive databases as well
as search engines; it starts with a great weather map of the world. http://www.internets.com/
More about Internet Searching
Want to learn more? There's lots of help on the
Web, from simple tutorials to indepth analysis of how individual search
engines work. Check out the sites below.
- How to Search the Web
Terry Gray does a great job of helping us layman get started in effectively
using search engines with this 11 page tutorial. http://daphne.palomar.edu/TGSEARCH/
- Search Engines
This is a more extensive presentation by Bruce Grossan on search engines:
what they are, how they work, and practical suggestions for getting the
most out of them. http://www.webreference.com/content/search/
- How Search Engines Work
Lots of links to indepth education on the details of how the leading search
engines work (part of the Webstep Top 100 site). http://www.mmgco.com/t100links.html
Listing your Site
The flip-side of finding information is making
sure your own web site gets found by those you want to find it. The sites
noted below will help you get your web pages listed with major search engines
and help you understand how search engines build their indices.
- Submit It! The first place to
go to quickly, easily submit your site to leading search engines. http://www.submit-it.com
- Webstep Top 100 The
most extensive links and helps to getting your Web site widely promoted
and listed on search engines. http://www.mmgco.com/top100.html
- TopSites This site features links
to the best places that will list your Christan web site for free. http://www.topsites.org
Meta Words
Meta words give you more control over narrowing your search to only
those web pages you really want. They require that specified text must
appear within specified features of the web site in order to be a hit.
To use meta words in your search, enter the meta word followed by a colon
followed by the key word desired. For example, entering "title:evangelical"
would find all web pages with the word "evangelical" in the title
of the web page. We've listed below the more popular meta words and
their syntax, along with links to Alta Vista examples using each meta word.
- title:text -- finds pages that contain the specified word or
phrase in the page title (which appears in the title bar at the top
of the screen in most browsers). Example1
-- title:evangelical -- find pages that contain the word "evangelical"
in the title of the web page. Example
2 -- +title:evangelical +title:mission -- find all web pages that contain
both the word "evangelical" and the word "mission"
in the title of the web page.
- url:text -- finds pages that contain a specific word or phrase
in the URL. Example
1 -- url:wheaton.edu -- find all Wheaton College web pages; that is,
pages that have "wheaton.edu" in their URL. Example
2 -- +url:wheaton.edu +title:Bible -- find all Wheaton College web
pages that have the word "Bible" in their title.
- domain:domainname -- finds pages within a specified Internet
domain. Example
1 -- domain:sg -- find all web pages from Singapore. Example
2 -- +domain:sg +title:church -- find all web pages from Singapore
that have the word "church" in their title.
- text:text -- finds pages that contain the specified word or
phrase in any part of thepage other than an image tag, link or URL. Example
1 -- text:"wall maps" -- find all web pages that contain
the phrase "wall maps" somewhere in their text. Example
2 -- +text:"wall maps" +domain:org -- find all non-profit
organization web pages (those with a domain of ".org") that contain
the phrase "wall maps".
- image:filename -- finds pages that have an image with a specified
file name. Example
1 -- image:mosque -- find all web pages that contain an image with
the word "mosque" in the file name of the image. Example
2 -- +image:mosque +title:mosque -- find all pages that contain an
image file with "mosque" in its name and contain the word "mosque"
in the page title.
- link:URLtext -- finds pages that link to a page with the specified
URL. Example
1 -- link:brigada.org -- find all pages that contain a link to the
missions web site Brigada. Example
2 -- +link:brigada.org +url:gmi.org -- find all GMI web pages that
contain a link to Brigada.
A member of the Gospel
Communications Network