Sample World Wide Web (WWW) Search Tools

(Warning: Information about the following may change at any time.)

ARGUS/University of Michigan Clearinghouse
http://www.clearinghouse.net/
Provides rating of bibliographies of Internet resources, including listservs, Web sites, & more, arranged by category.

HotBot
http://www.hotbot.com/
Claims to have 110 million Web pages in its database. The system automatically inserts a Boolean "and" between search words. You must select "Boolean search" to use operators ("and", "or", "not") in a search statement, to narrow or broaden a search.

Librarians' Index to the Internet
http://lii.org/
Web sites reviewed and selected by librarians. "Best Search Tools Form" links to a form for 10 Web search tools, with search hints. The "Search Tools Chart" at the bottom links to additional searching details.

Yahoo!
http://www.yahoo.com/
Items listed by category & submitted by users. Yahoo decides whether or not to include them. Uses Alta Vista if no results in Yahoo.

Alta Vista
http://www.altavista.com/
Fairly fast searching. Users may choose to search for Web Pages or through Usenet newsgroup postings.

Google
http://www.google.com
Very fast & sophisticated search engine which is more likely than most to give you relevant results. It searches both for matches to all the words you enter and for matches to which other pages link. It also keeps a cached copy of pages, so you can see a page as of the time it was indexed, even if it is temporarily unavailable.

Lycos
http://www.lycos.com/
Results are ranked based on closest match to search terms. Also provides 100 most significant words of Web Page. Can search just for sounds or pictures, as well as Web sites themselves. Includes list of top 5% Web sites rated by "Point."

NorthernLight
http://www.northernlight.com/
Provides integrates list of results from free and fee (4500 "Special Collections") Web resources. Generates customized subject folders for each search, which serve as sub-categories.

C|net Shareware.com
http://www.shareware.com
Search by keyword for software available for large variety of platforms, for low license fees, often on a limited trial basis.

DogPile
http://www.dogpile.com/
Allows simultaneous or individual searching through 25 different search tools. Use "custom search" to set the order in which it will search.

Metacrawler
http://www.metacrawler.com/
Does simultaneous search of a number of different search tools. Offers a low-bandwidth search option for Lynx & older machines.

search.com
http://www.search.com/
C|net site which searches for search tools by topic. Use category menus or type in topic words.

Search Engine Colossus
http://www.searchenginecolossus.com/
Color-coded list of links to search tools, categorized by country. Unusual search engines are in purple.

American Memory (Library of Congress)
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/ammem/
Search for photos, prints, motion pictures and other materials in the Library of Congress collections.

Labyrinth
http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/
This extensive web site focuses on medieval studies. Searches for words related to your search words and rates results based on closest match.

Created by Esther Grassian, 10/29/96. Revised 3/10/99. © 1996 Regents of the University of California
Permission is granted for unlimited non-commercial use.