The Best Search Engines In the Universe
Kate Benchoff
http://www.about.com/
This
is a great site, as easy to use as an encyclopedia (and a lot faster!) About.com would be a terrific starting place
for Internet research, especially for those of us who are sick of seeing World
Book citations in tenth grade research projects.
http://www.findarticles.com/
Finally
– an easy to access directory search that provides free, full-text,
semi-scholarly articles. Findarticles
is an interesting alternative to databases, but would require some experience
with evaluating sources.
News Search Engines
Google News
http://news.google.com/
Like
its general search engine counterpart, Google News provides navigable, reliable
and thorough results for news queries.
Also, Google News is an attractive, eye-catching page that is fun to
browse or use for research.
Yahoo News
http://news.yahoo.com/
Perhaps
less attractive than Google News, Yahoo provides an almost equal alternative
for news sources. Also easy to navigate
and thorough, Yahoo is nothing to sneeze at in the world of news sources.
Froogle
http://www.froogle.com
Sometimes
we feel like window-shopping, and other times we want to get in and get out, so
to speak. Froogle is the quick and
dirty version of shopping – no frills price comparisons and quick access to
nearby sources of whatever you need make shopping quick, easy, and (as always)
fun. Big “pro” – Froogle accepts no money
for product listings. Instead, results
are ranked by relevance.
Dealtime
http://www.dealtime.com
If you are going to sell your soul to Ebay, this is the way to do it. Dealtime provides the kind of comparison shopping that we all have grown to love, while still providing reliable and helpful user ratings.
Ask Jeeves For Kids
http://www.ajkids.com/
Remember
when Ask Jeeves was THE search engine to use (before it lost our beloved Jeeves
and became the boring ask.com)? Well,
Ask Jeeves for kids brings back our man Jeeves (now in retirement and doing all
kinds of new things) along with a terrific, fun search engine sure to catch the
eye of kids of all ages.
ALA Great Web Site for
Kids
http://www.ala.org/greatsites
What ALA lacks in style, it more than makes up for in quality. ALA’s Great Web Sites for Kids page provides links to reliable, informative, and well-made pages on anything you can imagine. If kids can pay attention long enough to get past the relatively boring search page, they are in for a treat.
Meta Search Engines
Clusty
http://www.clusty.com
Searching
through pages of websites can be tiresome, but Clusty makes up for it by
providing a helpful and thorough index of related topics that is clear and easy
to navigate.
Kartoo
http://www.kartoo.com
Kartoo
is fun to use, great for visually inclined people, and could potentially help
students understand the idea of research strands by the unique mapping results
page. However, proceed with caution
with easily confused students – some background in organizational strategies
will help with navigation.
Dogpile
http://www.dogpile.com
Like an ordinary search engine, Dogpile is easy to navigate and provides an equal cross-section of helpful sites and commercial sites/advertisements. And you get to type the word “dogpile.”