Search Tools and Techniques

Search Engine Showdown

Search Engine Watch

  Search Engines

     A Search Engine searches Internet files that are collected by a computer program, often called a “spider” or “robot.” Today’s search engines retrieve Web pages as well as audio-visual files, newsgroup messages, images, pdf documents, MS Office documents, and other types of files. For each query entered, search engines typically search millions of pages gathered by the spider, but no evaluative criteria are used to collect the results. Some popular search engines include:

  How to use Search Engines - The Spider's Apprentice

  AltaVista       Google       Google Book      Infopeople - Best Search Tools Chart       Lycos       Yahoo

    Many search engines include options for basic and advanced searching. All have help screens to show specialized search features. To get the best results you will want to perform a search using more than one search engine, or conduct your search using a meta-search engine that will query multiple search engines simultaneously.

  Meta-Search Engines

      Meta-search engines (also called mega-search or multi-threaded search engines) query multiple search engines simultaneously. The advantage to using them is that a search is only entered once. The disadvantage to using them is that different search engines interpret the search statement in different ways, often retrieving irrelevant results. A meta-search engine retrieves fewer results from each search engine than a direct search in an individual search engine would retrieve.

         Dogpile,             Excite,             Go.com,              Metacrawler,             Webcrawler

     Subject Directories

      Using subject directories is a more efficient method for locating reputable sites because content is evaluated by people rather than computerized "spiders" or "robots." Subject directories use a review process to evaluate Web pages before including them in their searches. Search results only include links to pages that have been selected for their content. Subject directories vary in the level of selectivity they use and generally retrieve fewer results than a search engine, but overall these sites are excellent sources for finding academic material on the Web.

           Academic Info             Best Information on the Net             Librarian's Index to the Internet

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