Tim Ratliff
05/22/2006
SLM-521
Search Engine
Search Engines
I have created a list of search engines that I have found to be very useful for educational purposes as well as leisure. I listed the top two search engines per group type. I included five groups of search engines: General, Government, News, Directory, and Kid Safe.
General
http://www.google.com
This search engine not only tops my general list, but it is my favorite search engine of all time. Google gathers tons of information very quickly and with the best results. Google is great for a general search and a very detailed search. Everyone has googled their name at least once. Whether it is news, hobbies, history, business, etc, Google is the way to go.
http://www.yahoo.com
This search engine is useful for finding general and detailed information. Yahoo includes links to news and entertainment as well as the option to set up a yahoo email account which you can check from the search engine site. Personally I find all that stuff on the screen a little distracting. Although yahoo will most likely find whatever you are looking for, it does not pull as much information from the web as Google does.
Government
http://www.firstgov.gov
This is actually the
official web portal of the government.
It is organized and run by the
http://www.loc.gov/index.html
As a History Major and
a future history teacher, this site is an invaluable source for student and
teacher alike. This search engine
even includes special resources for Teachers, Librarians and Kids. There is the ability to perform a broad
or well defined search of US documents.
This search engine is great for Primary Sources.
News
http://news.google.com
Google News allows you to search thousands of news sources across the web with key words. In addition to providing you with the top news stories of the day on the main page, you can filter the top stories based on their general topics such as World News, Health News, Business News, etc. The site claims to search and browse through 4500 news sources that are updated continuously.
http://www.wn.com
World News is a
great source for Social Studies and History teachers. I ranked in second to Google News
because World News contains only that, world news. If you are not interested in world news
stories that most likely will not appear in traditional
http://www.metacrawler.com
Although I rarely use a Meta Search Engine, this would be my number one choice. It will gather info from Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask Jeeves. You can do simple or advanced searches and MetaCrawler will allow a search of just Audio, Video or Image files which can come in handy for a teacher trying to find resources that keep the attention of their students.
http://www.dogpile.com
This Meta Search Engine is almost identical to MetaCrawler and pulls its information from the same four sources. If you like dogs maybe you would choose this one over MetaCrawler but I decided to rank it second based on a search of my name. MetaCrawler found 65 hits while Dogpile found 63. Since they both pull from the same four sources they are primarily the same Meta Search engine.
Directory
http://www.whitepages.com
White Pages is a great source for tracking down contact
information for people or businesses and the best part is that it is free. This site will allow you to search based
on a single person’s name, business name, or the type of business. The best part of this site is that it allows
you to search based on whatever part of contact info you may already have. Plug in the phone number to get the
address or vice versa. White Pages
includes directory info for the
http://www.superpages.com
This directory search engine is just as good as White Pages
is except that you have to look at the Verizon logo. You can do all the same searches and it
will gather all the same contact info that White Pages will. Out of all the directory search engines
out there though, this one ranks a solid second.