Linda Kilcoyne
SLM 521
Summer 02
Elective:  Search Engines

The Best Search Engines

    There is a vast amount of information on the internet and that amount grows daily.  In order to find what you want on the internet good search engines are needed.  The following is a list of sites for both adults and children.  Engines are listed with the first being the best.

Search Engines-search by keyword; databases complied by computers

Google – one of the largest and most popular search engines. It offers an easy to use advanced search option, a search within results option and ranking by popularity.  
AltaVista - Search engine and directory has indexed millions of sites. Users can perform complex searches.
AlltheWeb -  This search engine is huge, and works very quickly

Sites for Kids:

Kids Search Engines:  The kid-safe directories below use human beings to filter out sites that might be considered objectionable for viewing by children.

AOL NetFind Kids Only - From AOL, it contains links to sites that are safe for kids.
Ask Jeeves For Kids - Ask Jeeves service where you enter a question, and Ask Jeeves   points you to the right web page that provides an answer.  If Ask Jeeves cannot answer a question, it pulls results from various search engines in its metacrawler mode. 
Yahooligans - Designed for ages 7 to 12; sites are hand-picked to be appropriate for children. Also, unlike normal Yahoo, searches will not be forwarded to Yahoo's search engine partner Inktomi if there is no match from within the Yahooligan listings. This prevents possibly objectionable sites from slipping onto the screen.  Yahooligans is the oldest major directory for children, launched in March 1996.
KidsClick! - Backed by librarians, KidsClick lists about 5,000 web sites in various categories.

Subject Directories: less specific search; broader categories; human-selected sites, organized by subjects.

Librarians inde x - This resource provides a directory of over 5,000 web resources that have been evaluated and reviewed by librarians. 
About.com - This site offer search alphabetically or by category.  The education category is divided into specific areas such as elementary educators and you can search within that topic. 
Infomine – This site provides a basic search, an advanced search and browsing specific databases.  It has over 20,000 resources which have been put together by university and college level librarians.  

Meta Search Engines:

Ixquick - Meta search engine that ranks results based on the number of "top 10" rankings a site receives from the various search engines.
Vivisimo-Enter a search term, and Vivismo will not only pull back matching responses from major search engines but also automatically organize the pages into categories. Easy to use.
qbSearch - Get multiple pages of results from a search engine combined into one single page. qbSearch will join up to 200 pages of listings from major search engines.
Infonetware RealTerm Search - This site is primarily designed to demonstrate classification technology from Infogistics.  However, it is unique in that you can select several different topics, then "drill down" to see results from all of them, rather than being restricted to the results from only one topic. 
SurfWax - Searches against major engines or provides those who open free accounts the ability to chose from a list of hundreds. You can preview any page in the results and see where your terms appear in the document. Allows results or documents to be saved for future use.

Specialty Search Engines - When you need to find more than just web pages and web sites, some of the "specialty search engines" below will prove useful. Also called topical search engines.

Answers Searching- When someone is looking for the answer to something, rather than a specific web site. 
Government Search - Search engines allow you to search for official government information.
Mailing Lists -  The mailing list search engines point you to the right mailing lists to subscribe to.
Science Search Engines - The science search engines let you find information within different fields.
Newsgroup Search - Find a relevant newsgroup for a particular topic by looking at newsgroup names.

Specialized Searches for Kids:

The Amazing Picture Machine - pictures of all types
Art Kids Rule - searches for arts and crafts sites
Book Reviews by Kids - searches the World of Reading site
BlackDog - searches the BlackDog site
Crayola - searches the Crayola site
Disney.com - searches the Disney and Family.com sites
Enchanted Learning - searches the Enchanted Learning site
FactMonster- On-Line Dictionary, Encyclopedia, and Homework Help
IvyJoy - searches the Ivy's Domain site
ThinkQuest Library - student-authored topics
Zillions Search - searches the Consumer Reports for Kids site

Multimedia Search Engines - These multimedia search engines will help locate sound, image or video files.

AltaVista Photo Finder - Find photos, images, audio and video clips from all over the web. Search results feature thumbnails of images found.
FAST Multimedia Search - Millions of images, audio and video files from across the web can be located via this crawler-based index, powered by FAST Search. You can also narrow searches to particular formats, such as JPEG, GIF, BMP, MIDI, MP3, MPEG and QuickTime.
Ditto - Search or browse to find images on the web. Matches are displayed in thumbnail format.
Lycos Pictures and Sounds - The Lycos multimedia search service.
Scour.Net - A multimedia search engine that allows users to find audio, video and images on the web, including MP3 files.
SpeechBot - Search through the audio files of popular US radio programs. Enter a subject, and you'll be shown matching programs and even be taken to the exact points in the shows where the subject is being discussed.
MIDI Explorer - Allows you to search for MIDI files.

News Search Engines: Search for the latest news stories from hundreds of sources on the web.  The results are usually focused and timely.

AltaVista News - This provides access to a wide-range of news information, updated constantly throughout the day.
AllTheWeb.com News - Keyword search against content gathered from news sites across the web and which are revisited constantly
Yahoo News - Stories from major wire services can be found here, while the "Full Coverage" area has special looks at various news topics.
Daypop - Simple and fast, Daypop searches against thousands of news sites, as well as web logs.
RocketNews - Keyword search against news content gathered from across the web or choose to view news headlines by topic.
Google Headline News - Compiles top headlines from more than 100 leading English language newspapers into a single page, and groups them into six categories: World, US, Business, Entertainment, Science and Sports.