Internet Search Engines

About.com
A collection of specialty sites, each run by a professional Guide who builds an environment around each of his or her specific topics, including the best new content, relevant links, How-To's, Forums, and answers to just about any question. Hundreds of Guide sites organized into 23 channels, covering more than 50,000 subjects with over 1 million links to the best resources on the Net.

AltaVista
Great for attempting to find a needle in a haystack, but has the tendency to produce too many search results without finely tuning your search query.

Ask Jeeves
A relative newcomer to the search scene. Type in a question and click the Ask! button. Displays results by search engine: 10 matches by AltaVista; 9 matches by InfoSeek, etc.

CyberFiber
A comprehensive, searchable directory of Usenet and alt. newsgroups.

DogPile
One of my favorite meta search engines. Fast and easy to use, just the way I like 'em. Type in your search term, click the Fetch button, and results will be presented by search engine.

Excite!
Concept searching is the main strength of this search engine. When it works, it works beautifully. When it doesn't, it will ruin your life and cause mold to grow within your refrigerator. Concept searching allows you to enter related words such as "snow" and "vacation" and end up with the search engine searching for ski resorts, travel, hypothermia , avalanche, gangrene, etc. You'll be too depressed to travel, so Excite! can save you money, as well!

Foto Stock Image Search
Allows users to search more than 700,000 royalty-free photographs, clipart pictures, illustrations, video clips, and background clip-art imagery.

Go Hip!
"The cool way to search the Web." I can't say that I noticed anything cooler about Go Hip! than any other meta search engine, but since I've never been accused of being cool, I probably wouldn't notice anyway. Searches are fast and GoHip's interface is easy-to-use

Google Catalog Search
Google (best known for its search engine) launched a search service for more than 1,500 mail-order catalogs. It presents a vast collection of catalogs ranging from A Cook’s Ware (kitchen products) to Zones (Business Technology), covering just about anything which can be ordered via a catalog. A random sample includes biotech gear, exotic car accessories, socially aware tours of Europe, king/queen-size clothing, waterfowl supply, beauty products , and Martha (Stewart) by Mail. Click “Browse Complete List of Catalogs” for an alphabetical listing of all catalogs.

Google Newsgroup Search
Google, also makes available hundreds of millions (yes, that's right, hundreds of millions) newsgroup (bulletin board) messages dating back to 1981. What's particularly fascinating is a timeline of significant postings, with links to each original message. For example, the first mention of the MS-DOS operating system occurred on June 18, 1981, followed on June 19th by the first use of the phrase “I hate computers.” The first mention of a fax machine occurred in February 1983; the first mention of the term "search engine" occurred in March 1988; and the first announcement of the World Wide Web occurred in August 1991.

Google
A model of simplicity. Enter a keyword and press either the Google Search or I'm Feeling Lucky button. Conducting a Google Search permits you to select 10, 30 or 100 search results; an I'm Feeling Lucky search returns one result, assuming you are, indeed, lucky.

Hot Sheet
Heralded as "the easiest way to the best of the Web," you can use this site as a meta search engine or as a launch pad to any of hundreds of categories listed. Visit shopsheet.com for a handy Web-based shopping directory.

KartOO
When it comes to unusual search engines, this one takes the virtual cake. Enter your search term and instead of a snooze-inducing list of links, you'll receive a snazzy color map with links to the search-result sites.

Lycos
Permits you to confine your keyword search to the top five percent of Web sites as determined by Lycos' reviewers. (Now that's a job!)

Macinstein
A Macintosh-specific search engine and a wonderful resource for people who use Macs. Especially handy when you're looking for specific hardware or software. Just type in a word like monitors--no need to type in Apple or Macintosh--and you'll find monitors made for your platform. The site also tracks Apple stock quotes and news and maintains links to other Mac-specific sites and publications.

Mamma
This search engine is subtitled "The Mother of All Search Engines," and it's a big one, for sure. Mamma describes itself as a "smart meta search engine" that will analyze queries and format keywords for each source it probes. You may experience some slight discomfort while Mamma is probing.

NewsTrawler
A search engine for news on the Internet. Search for articles from the archives of hundreds of online news, magazine and journal sources from around the world.

One Seek
Query dozens of search engines in a variety of categories, without the need to visit the sites individually. Also permits you to create a SmartStart personalized search page. It requires a small -- and free -- (100KB) download, that offers some very nice custom features.

Photo Search Stock Image Search Engine
Search more than 90 top stock photography and image sources at one site. More than one million images, including royalty-free photography, clip-art pictures, illustrations, video clips, vector maps, and background clip art imagery. Use the Advance Search function to narrow your search and find the perfect image for any purpose.

Profusion
Start off by selecting a search mode that can range from simple to more complex Boolean searches. Next, decide if you want to search the Web or Usenet (newsgroups). Then, determine if you would like your search results to display with a summary or without. Lastly, you can request that a number of links (ranging from zero to 50) within search results sites be checked, and the number of bad links will be displayed and verified.

Reference.com
Search for data within newsgroups as well as by newsgroup topic. Also search mailing lists.

Search.com
Hosted by C/Net, Search.com utilizes multiple search engines. You can select which search pages it will use, as well as search topically.

Teoma
Teoma, which is Gaelic for "expert," (I'll bet you knew that!) ranks search results by subject popularity which correlates a level of authority to search results by measuring a site based on the number of same-subject pages that reference it. Sounds confusing, but it's not. Give it a try.

TracerLock
A wonderful, fee-based service that monitors search engines and notifies you by e-mail when a new instance of your requested search term is found. Very handy for keeping current or becoming so overloaded with information, you'll never leave the house again.

Ultimates, The
Search phone books, email directories, trip planners and 25 Internet-based services from one location.

WebCrawler
One of the original Web search engines featuring a well-organized and selective index with several very useful and user-friendly options.

Yahoo!
Not technically a search engine, but rather a hierarchical guide to what's worthwhile on the Web. It searches what is contained in its database as opposed to searching the Web at large.