Internet Search Engines and Retrieval Tools

• Introduction and popular search engines
• All you ever wanted to know about search engines....
• Comparisons of search engines
• Other search tools

New search tools for the Internet seem to be announced every week, but most users will tend to become familiar with one or two and use those in preference to others.  Google (URL: http://www.google.com/) is currently recommended as a fast and comprehensive search tool.

Search engines are are programs which automatically "crawl" the Internet following links from documents and collecting information (such as the URL, title of the document, and keywords from the text) about the resources they encounter. The resulting indexes (or databases) do not necessarily duplicate each other as as they work in different ways. For an extensive search on a topic it may be worth trying several search tools or a meta-search engine.

Popular search engines include the following services. You can find out more about them in the section on comparisons of search engines.

Alta Vista URL: http://www.altavista.com/
Excite URL: http://www.excite.com/
FAST URL:  http://www.alltheweb.com
Google URL: http://www.google.com/
Hotbot URL: http://hotbot.lycos.com/
Infoseek URL: http://infoseek.go.com
Lycos URL: http://www.lycos.com/
Northern Light URL: http://www.northernlight.com/

Meta-search engines allow more than one search tool to be searched at a time.

Dogpile  URL: http://www.dogpile.com/
Mamma.com URL: http://www.mamma.com/
MetaCrawler URL: http://www.go2net.com/search.html
ProFusion URL: http://www.profusion.com/

All you ever wanted to know about search engines....

The following two websites contain a wealth of information on all aspects of searching the Internet and are highly recommended as a starting point:

• Search Engine Showdown (Greg Notess) URL: http://www.notess.com/search/
• Search Engine Watch URL: http://searchenginewatch.com/

Comparisons of search engines

How to Choose a Search Engine (Laura Cohen)
URL: http://library.albany.edu/internet/choose.html

Internet Search Tool Details (Berkeley Digital Library)
URL: http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Help/searchdetails.html

Search Engine Comparisons  (from: Sink or Swim: Internet Search Tools & Techniques)
URL: http://www.lboro.ac.uk/info/training/finding/sink.htm#compare

Search Tools - a guide to search engines (Manchester Metropolitan University)
URL: http://www.mmu.ac.uk/h-ss/dic/main/search.htm

Web Search Tool features (Ian Winship)
URL: http://www.unn.ac.uk/central/isd/features.htm

Other search tools

Search engines covering particular subjects can be located using:

• Search by Subject (BUBL)  URL: http://bubl.ac.uk/searches/subjects/
• Specialty Search Engines (Search Engine Watch) URL: http://www.searchenginewatch.com/links/Specialty_Search_Engines/

Search engines and directories which cover Christian resources include:

• Best of the Christian Web URL: http://www.botcw.com/
• Christian Topics URL: http://www.christiantopics.com/
• GOSHEN URL: http://www.goshen.net/
• Internet Christian Library URL: http://www.iclnet.org/
• Not Just Bibles URL: http://www.iclnet.org/pub/resources/christian-resources.html

Search tools which limit your search by geographical region can be located using:

• Regional Search Engines (Search Engine Watch) URL: http://searchenginewatch.internet.com/links/Regional_Search_Engines/
• Search by Country (BUBL) URL: http://bubl.ac.uk/searches/countries/

Archives of  newsgroups are also searchable. The Usenet News Searching (Greg Notess) webpage provides guidance.  URL: http://www.notess.com/search/usenet/

Last checked and updated June 2002

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