Almost All the Searching Tools

[B] = Browsing tool
[K] = Keyword searching tool
[U] = Uniform Meta-Search Engine (Multi-threaded Search Engine)
[M] = Multiform Meta-Search Engine (Multi-form Front-ends for Search Engines)
[S] = Special Navigators

100Hot Websites [B]
A list of the most popular sites every week. Find the hottest Web sites in the hottest categories: live events, technology, models, celebrities, humor, and showbiz. It's like a best-seller list for Web sites.

A
Access New Zealand [B+K]
A searchable directory of web sites maintained by New Zealand companies and organizations. Owned by Access Directories Ltd. and developed by WebMasters Ltd.
Abacho [K]
A German keyword searchers. Searches keywords in full text German pages.
AliWeb [K]
See "Search Engines" for a description.
All4One [U]
Simultaneous searches on other engine sites: Alta Vista, Lycos, Yahoo and Webcrawler. Returns an integrated list.
AltaVista - Local: France - Germany - Italy - Sweden [K]
Databases: Web and Usenet. Contents: Full-text index of more than 30 million Web pages and more than 15,000 Usenet newsgroups, updated in real time. One of the largest Web index Their spider ('Scooter') crawls the Web at 3 million pages a day and the indexer crunches 1 GB of text per hour. Searching: Powerful and very fast search engine. Offers a simple search or advanced query mode. Within simple search, users can search for exact phrases, require or prohibit words, search within the title field of an HTML document, search for documents that contain a link to a particular URL, use wildcards, and employ case sensitivity. The advanced query allows for the use of Boolean operators (and, or, not, near) ans lets users limit searches by date. Results: Offers three results options: (1) the number of matches (with none of them displayed), (2) 'Compact' results that put each item on one line (the link on the left, followed by the last update date of the file, then the machine-generated abstract scrolling off the screen to the right), and (3) 'Detailed' results (the default option) with the links followed by the machine-generated item abstract in an indented paragraph with the URL at the bottom, the file size and the last update. Results are returned ten items on suggestion. Pro's: Fast searches, large database, finds things others don't. Cons: Inadequate relevancy ranking on Simple Search, which spits out too many lists of links instead of useful documents. Created by: Digital Equipment.

Search and Display the Results
Amazing Environmental Organization Web Directory [B/K] - The categories in this web directory cover topics such as animal rights, solar energy, and sustainable development.
Ananzi [K] - Search engine dedicated to the South African domain.
AnySearch [K} - A Korean search engine.
Archie Gateway - FTP Search Locates files on anonymous ftp sites on the Internet. A network-based information tool offering proactive data retrieval and indexing for widely distributed collections of data. Perhaps the best known application of the Archie system is to maintain this Internet Archives database. The database currently contains the names of over 2,400,000 files at over 1,000 anonymous FTP archive sites. Users can rapidly locate needed files without the need to log onto dozens or even hundreds of machines. The Archie system is much more than the Internet Archives database: it has been expanded into a generalized information gathering and distributed database maintenance tool. With Archie, you can build an up-to-date, accurate directory of Internet services, or define new databases and gather entries from across the network.
Ask Jeeves - Allows you to enter plain English questions, to which Jeeves serves up suggested web pages. It's a variation on the All-in-One Search Page theme. Jeeves searches multiple search engines to find out what sites may have the answers to your questions. You might want to ask ÒWhat is a SocioSite?"

B
Beaucoup Search Engines [M] - More than 2.500 search engines and directories in categorized tables. In 6 languages, all-in-one searches, and forms.
BUBL: Subject Tree - Provides a subject-based service to the academic and research community. Also provides access to Internet resources by other means, including pointers to Iternet searching facilities, services by type, and major network services. There are also links to WWW and networking tools, and network training resources. BUBL provides a weekly internet resources current awareness service, BUBL Updates, as well. These are distributed over the lis-link mailing list, and include detail of all files added to our news and jobs sections. BUBL originated in the BUlletin Board for Libraries. BUBL now maintains a gopher and web server, and is currently engaged in a project to combine them both into a new WWW service.

C
ClearingHouse for Subject-Oriented Internet Research Guides | - Social Sciences and Social Issues | Sociology - A meta catalogue to specialized guides for most subjects which can be found on the Internet (from artificial intelligence to zoology). The guides themselves list WWW, gopher and ftp sites. Some guides are hyperlinked, some are plain text. The databases of guides is also searchable. Creator: University of Michigan Library and Argus Associates.
Company Site Locator [K] - Tool for searching for websites of companies when you don't know the exact URL address. Type in a company name and it tries to find its Webs site.
Content Router [K]
Cosmic Mother Load [M] - Featuring 'The Insane Search'.
Cnet Shareware.com
One of the lagest Web shareware sites. It indexes over 190,000 software files located in archives around the Internet, including freeware, shareware, demos, patches, fixes, and upgrades. Users can search by platform, archive, or software name. Browsing by platform, archive, or keyword is also available. Approximate download times are given and download reliability is also noted. The site offers an e-mail newsletter to keep current on new additions. Created by: c|net inc.
Cusi at CWI
(Configurable United Search Interface). A forms-based search tool which allows you to seach many searchable WWW resources, software indexes, people indexes, dictionaries, publications, news etc. You can also try SUSI at the Information Systems Working group at the University of Twente. Created by: Martijn de Koster from Nexor (UK).

D
DasCrazy's Crazy Page of Search Engines [M]
Dave Central Software Archive [S]
Dave's Internet Search Engines [M]
Deja News - Usenet search. A tool for searching Usenet archives which contains a large collection of indexed archived Usenet articles from past month. Searchable.
Dewey Decimal Hotlist - created by David A. Mundie.
Dino [K] - German search engine and index (in German).

Put a star * before a search to word endings or characters in words

Case Sensitivity
Discovery Channel
Disinformation [K] - Everything you know is wrong.
Dogpile [U] - Searches the Web (Yahoo!, Lycos' A2Z, Excite Guide, Go2.com, WWW Yellow Pages , PlanetSearch, Thunderstone, What U Seek, Magellan, Lycos, WebCrawler, InfoSeek, AltaVista, Excite & HotBot), Usenet (Hotbot News, Reference.com, Dejanews, Altavista and Dejanews' old Database), FTP (Filez, FTP Search) and News Wires (Yahoo News Headlines, Excite News and Infoseek NewsWires). Only the first word will be passed on to FTP Search.

Search and then
Wait a maximum of Seconds.
Dr. Webster's Big Page of Search Engines [M]
Dutch Home Page - Searching geographically.

E
EC rider [B/K] - A Dutch browsing and keyword searching tool. Fast and easy to use. A search engine and search directory wich categorises all the Dutch sites by subject. In the settings users can change between de EC rider databases: Dutch, French, German or Italian. Yoy can also change the language in Dutch, English, French, German or Italian. Each document is rated, but the rating items are not explained. You can search by sitename, keyword, review or target audience. Boolean operators are nicely implementated, and number of hits can be moderated.
eDirectory [M] - The worlds search engines, categorized by country.
Elcano, the Spanish Search Engine - The most popular search engine for Spanish World. You can find thousands directions in many languages, specially in Spanish.
The Electric Library - Rather than searching the Web, check out the Electric Library's contents. Launch comprehensive searches across this extensive database of more than 1000 full-text newspapers, magazines, and academic journals; images; reference books; literature; and art.
El Paso Infopage Search Engines [M]
Essence of India - Indian Resource Center
Eureka! Internet Search Engines [M] - Links and reviews to search engines and directories. Includes detailed information on search engines and how they work, and a chapter that shows you how to get your web site listed in all the major search engines.
Europages - More than 150.000 companies in Europe. You can search a product or service and company names.
European Directory - Browse by subject or by country, or use the Euro-Search.
EuroFerret - A search engine which allows you to search in all the European countries. From: Muscat (UK).

Country:

EuroSeek [K] - Europe's premiere search engine. It's very fast and easy to handle. It has an interface for almost every European language. You can choose the region from which the resulting documents will originate. You can use the Boolean operators AND and OR and you can search phrases by using quotes. The engine is powered by SUN enterprise and is located at Hallonbergen in Sweden.


Limit hits to region:	Limit to Language:

Excite [B] [K] - Database: Excite is a multi-purpose site. NetReviews is acompanion to the Excite search engine. Fast, smart and user friendly tool for searching full-text of Web pages and Usenet Newsgroups. Web sites and Usenet sites are hierarchically arranged within 14 broad categories, each subcategorized and designed to support informed browsing. Informative reviews and all terms in the subject hierarchy are created and maintained by 30 professional journalists. Contents: It offers NetReviews, as well as an index to more than 1,5 million Web documents, the past two weeks of Usenet news and Usenet classified ads. Searching: Options for searching by concept and keyword. Only simple phrases (concepts, keywords) can be searched and no Boolean operators are supported. Results: A text summary of what's at located sites. (Architext Software).

Enter words describing a concept or keywords:

Search: Web Usenet Classifieds Reviews
EZ-Find! [M] - It lets you enter keywords to search for, and then submit them in turn to several search engines without having to retype them for each engine.

F
Facing Facts - A search tool from the Netherlands.
Federal Government of Canada Departments
Filez [S] - Looking for software for Mac, Dos, Windows, Unix, Newton, Atari or Amiga? Here you'll find 60 million files on 40,000 ftp-sites.
Find-It! [M] - An internet search tool for finding web/www documents, people, software, and usenet newsgroups with a cool interface. Search them all from one page.
FindLaw [S] - Finding legal resources.
Fireball [K]
A German search engine, from the technical university of Berlin. With more than 4,5 million documents (April 1998) it is the biggest search engine for documents in the german language.
Fish-Search - But don't expect to catch something you can eat.
FrameSearch - Searches multiple sites at the same time. By W3COM division of Advance Enterprise Inc.
Free Compilers List [S] - Software.
FTP Search [S]
Fun City Web Search Page [M]

G
Galaxy (formerly EInet Galaxy) [B] - One of the first browsing tools available and one of the largest. A well organized and easy- to-browse topical arrangement to a wide variety of resources. Provided as a public service by Trade Wave and 25 volunteer guest editors (real human editors). A useful new search engine interface (WebSearch) offers easy searching of the selected indexes: Galaxy pages (full text, title only or links only), Gopher titles, and Telnet sites. Connection problems due to its popularity.
GeoSurfer (from World Access Internet Navigator) - A 'surf engine' designed for browsing. Geographical access to 50,000 Web pages with links arranged first by continent, then by country. Within a country, city and/or region, access is achieved by selecting the first letter of the name and then scanning an alpha list of links. Hierarchy is computer generated by alpha sorting keywords from the Web page name, city, country, and a site description. The hierarchy is also searchable. Commercial site, but no fee yet. Geosurfer is maintained by World Access Yellow Pages, Inc.
GlOSS - Database for text.
GlobalAds [M] - A short list of major search engines, but nothing special.
GNA Catalog of Courses The Globewide Network Academy is an educational & research organization dedicated to providing a competitive marketplace online for distance learning courses and programs. Their mission is to create a comprehensive source of information, a central listing of online courses and degree programs worldwide. The GNA Catalog of Courses is only part of the spectrum of services they offer to the online education community. They also support a discussion forum for distance educators and maintain a help-wanted database to connect educational institutions, teachers, and technical support personnel. For distance education courses or programs, you can visit their online distance education catalog; if you click on 'society' and 'sociology', and you may find what your're looking for.
GTP SuperPages - 10 million US businesses and 50,000 web sites.

H
Harvest - Well-maintained database which concentrates on indexing 'content summaries', less duplication. Also provides specialized databases you can search such as public PC software distribution sites, Computer Science technical reports, and AT&T 1-800 number by category or name.
Health AtoZ [S] - Search in medical and health related sites.
Holland ExxPo - An overview of what the Netherlands has to offer in and outside of the Internet. You can also get Holland City Index about (almost) all cities and villages, a geographic overview, or a company oriented overview of WWW-servers in the Netherlands.
Home Team [K] - Search for pages or names, multiple source searches, limited searches, batch e-mails, submits to multiple search engine sites.
HotBot - [K] Web-crawling, Usenet indexing, frill-packed searcher based on the Inktomi engine, set up with Wired Magazine. A search engine capable of indexing the entire WWW every week. Claims to be the most complete Web index with 54 million documents. HotBot's next-generation interface lets you search on Java, VRML, and Netscape plug-ins, allows you to limit searches by date, domain, or continent.
HyperSearch Index [M] - Lots of search services in one convenient place. Find anything anywhere anytime.

I
I/spy Internet News Search [M] - A meta-search tool that allows you to search numerous news & public information databases on the Web simultaneously.
IBM Search
IBM infoMarket Search - Allows the serious user to simultaneously search Web and commercial resources including 66 newswires, 300 newspapers, 770 newsletters, 6300 journals and 11.5 companies. Information can be purchased on a per document basis using IBM's Cryptolope technology, enabling users to buy and sell content secruely over the Internet.
inferenceFind [U]
A search tool that calls out in parallel the best search engines on the Internet, merges the results, removes redundancies, and clusters the hits into neat understandable groupings. You can quickly see which documents are relevant and which are irrelevant. It's made for people who got tired of hitting "Next 10 hits". It queries the best 6 search engines on the web, but can be configured to call any search engine. Currently they are calling WebCrawler, Yahoo, Lycos, Alta Vista, InfoSeek, and Excite. Inference Find searches each engine with the absolute maximum each engine will allow. It's good and it's fast. From: Inference Corporation.

MaxTime: seconds
iHunt [M]
Important Search Engines [M] - A short list of major search engines, but nothing special. By: Phil Gibbs
Index of Indices [M] - Search for web sites, email addresses, usenet articles, or software.
I-Explorer - A category-based directory of Internet sites.
Information SuperLibrary SuperSeek - The card catalog of the Internet.
ILSE (NL) - Interactive Lowland Search Engine, from the Netherlands. A very fast and easy to use searcher. Almost 800,000 indexed Dutch pages. Also searches newsgroups in the Netherlands.

Zoek in: Pagina's: Samenvatting:
Infohiway [K] - Point-n-go access to the Infohiway. GeoSurfer reveals the web geographically.

Infomine - A virtual library of close to 5,000 links to scholarly and educational resources from Mitchell and Mooney.

The Informant Server - Personal search agent. You'll get an email when your favorite URLs are updated.

Infoseek Ultraseek --> Infoseek UK --> Infoseek Japan [K]
Intends to be the fastest, most comprehensive, and first virtually real-time search technology available. Here are the claims. Size: With more than 50 million indexed URL's it's one of the largest collection of WWW pages in the world. It uses a new multi-threaded worm and the Matisse object-oriented database for storing WWW pages. This allows more accuracy in tracking pages. It can check over 25 million pages a week. It can perform 1,000 queries per second on a database of over 1 billion documents (that's 50 times larger than the largest WWW databases today). With a patent-pending distributed search algorithm it merges results from multiple collections. Speed: It processes multi-word queries 100 times faster than any other search engine. It processes phrase queries more than 6,000 times faster than its closest competitor. With a new searching algorithm, search speed only decreases by a factor of 10 for every thousand-fold increase in the database size. You can search a database of a 10 billion documents 10 times faster than the competitors can search a 10 million document database today. Longer queries take less time than shorter queries! Case information (i.e., upper/lowercase) is retained, as is proximity information: you can search for the phrase "To be or not to be" and get precise results; you can search for AIDS and not get matches on "aids." The only other engine that can do both of these queries is Alta Vista. Currency: It is the first virtually 'real-time' index of the Internet: you can submit your WWW page to their index and they will immediately download it. Within 100 msec from the time the page is fully downloaded, it can be found in a search. Their new worm keeps track of how often pages are changing and downloads each page at its frequency of change. Accuracy: It uses a highly accurate relevance ranking algorithm. Search features that provide high precision include such automatic name recognition, phrase searching, field searching and advanced query operators, such as require and reject.
Inktomi - A whip fast, easy, and fairly accurate web indexer with a very large database (over 1.3 million pages). It uses parallel computing technology to build a scalable web server. A relative newcomer from the University of California. Searches can be up to 10 words. You can use"+" before a term to include it, or "-" to make sure a term does not appear. Results are ranked for computed relevance (but nothing special). Weakness: (1) The gain in simplicity means a sacrifice in power. (2) Inktomi is dramatically less configurable than search tools like Alta Vista. (3) It provides only limited information about results. (4) It's repetitive and redundant: a tendency to list multiple documents on a server which can make shifting through the possibilities a time-consuming process; the scant amount of information it returns for search results. No matter which option you choose, you won't get an abstract or a summary of the site's contents. Last updated: dec' 95. Created by: Paul Gauthier and Eric Brewer of the University of California at Berkeley.
inquiry.com - Finding Software online. A large software engine. You can search for software, software producers etc. A research database of over 100,000 published technical articles for software developers and information technology professionals. Great service for software developers and information engineers.
Internet Connections, Inc [K].
De Internet Gids - Another very small Dutch Guide (2558 at last visit)
Internet Navigation Tools - Seventy or so Internet search tools classified by their functionality according to the kind of search a user would want to. From the librarians at Rice Info.
Internet Navigator - A unified interface for over 77 search engines all on one page.
Internet Search [K] - Internet MCI's search engine, powered by Open Text.
Internet Search Engines [serve.com] [M] - Uses frames and new windows to feature Yahoo!, Lycos, InfoSeek, LinkStar, WWW Yellow Pages, Starting Point and more.
Internet Public Library - A service offered by the University of Michigan. The Reference Center, with the ability to query the on-duty desk librarian, is a particularly interesting place to visit and browse around. The Ready Reference Collection contains links with descriptive annotations for selected Internet sources. Ready Reference is also keyword searchable.
Internet Search at Netscape [M]
Internet Searching Center [M] - Created to help users find information, software, and communities of people on the Internet.
Internet - Searching (CMC) [M] - John December's current and comprehensive list of ways to search the Internet.
Internet Sleuth, The [B] & [M] -Collection of over 1.500 searchable databases covering a wide variety of topics. Parllel searching allows the simultaneous search of up to 10 databases within categories.
Internet's Control Panel, The [M]
InterNIC Directory of Directories - Allows searching and browsing of more than 30 subject categories. Each entry is annotated by the resource provider with resource type, keywords, resource description, methods of access, and information on how to contact the provider of the resource. Pro's: Detailed descriptions provided for each entry. Created by: InterNIC - AT&T.
TheIrena - WebConnections Finder - Glean from a target page of this Web server all relevant hypertext links and their annotations. Irena is is especially useful for locating links to resources referenced in long, complex and densly written HTML documents.
Isearch/Isite Search Engine - Free text search-engine supporting fields & boolean searches, indexing SGML/HT ML, and searches through CGI and Isite, a server supporting V.3 or the ISO/ANSI standard Z39.50 search protocol.
IS Workgroup, Search page
Italian Spider [K]
iTools! [M] - Internet Tools is a collection of three convenient meta-resources (1) Find-It! which list search engines around the Web, (2) Promote-It! which lists several ways to get your Web page noticed, and (3) Research-IT!, which provides a quick way to research different resources, Web-based or otherwise. Each page provides links to the resources, and in most cases, also supplies forms for them so you can choose wether to use It!'s pages, or go straight to the source.
IWEB Search Service [K]
JavaBot [U] - Javabot releases beta version of its meta search engine titled Javabot Plus. Javabot currently allows users to simultaneously search Yahoo, Altavista, Excite, Webcrawler and Lycos. It comes in both the standard edition and the Javabot Plus version for Java enabled browers. The beta release has many new client features such as boolean searches, stored queries, and the "preview" option.

Sorted By Score
Fast Display
Jayde Online Directory - A consice indexe of the best local, national and international sites on the WWW.
Jumbo Shareware This searchable archive contains over 200,000 shareware and freeware programs. Categories include: business, home, personal, programming, utilities, and words and graphics. Within each category, programs are cataloged by operating system. The entire archive is a searchable by program category and operating system. There is a short annotation with the programs to help determine whether or not the user wants to download the program. The size of each program is provided, as well as a 'starter kit' for each operating system which includes a decompression and anti-virus program. Created by: Jumbo, Inc.
Gopher Jewels
Catalog of resources available from gophers worldwide, maintained at the University of Southern California. It contains over 2000 links and is divided into 13 major subject areas, including "Education, Social Sciences, Arts & Humanities", "Internet and Computer Related Resources", and "Natural Sciences including Mathematics."
Jughead [S] - Gopher directory search.
Jump City - Search their reviewed "Best of the Web" sites.
Kolibri [K] - German oriented search engine.
Langenberg Search [M] - A one-stop shopping gateway to some of the most popular search engines for a variety of subjects. You can access search engine collections in 25 categories, from books, dictionaries, encyclopedias, government, and maps to cooking, travel, entertainment, and sports. Within each category, keyword boxes and direct links are provided for each search engine listed. Users are sent to the respective engine's search return page for their results. Created and maintained by Chuck Langenberg.
L'ere Bete [M]
LED Sign
LinkCentre [B]
LinkSearch [where.com] [M]
LinkStar
Lokace [K] - Francophone search engine.
Lycos [K] - Databases: Search all URLs by keyword. Indexes document titles, headings, links. Contains not only text files, but also sound, video, software, and other multimedia files. Also indexes FTP archives and Gopher menus. Combination of a search engine with hundreds of spiders (CentiSpeed technology) that collect information. Size: A huge index - it claims to have indexed 91 per cent of the Web: 60 million unique URLs. Maybe not the biggest, but very big. Contents: Abstracts that contain the titles, headings, subheadings, 100 most significant words, first 20 lines of each file, size in bytes and number of words Search entries. The index searches by document title, links and keywords. Lycos 250 is a hotlist of top sites on the Web. Searching: There is no way to specify adjacency in terms, but adjacency is used to rank relevance; results are scored and listed in order. Many search options, but only simple Boolean keyword searches (and, or). Users can set the relevance feature looser or stronger in order to return a greater number or lesser number of documents, and customize how their results are displayed. Be aware that the simple search form has the Boolean 'or' operator set as a default. Results: Delivers the most comprehensive results (generally equivalent to Alta Vista's), listed in ranked order. Information includes document address, title, file size, and an excerpt from the file. In the forms-based search you can set the number of hits . Pro's: One of the largest, most up-to-date, good harvesting and indexing principles. Server lists and frequency statistics available in Lycos Results. Cons: The size of the report is often overwhelming (much irrelevant information; old versions of pages). It excludes certain common "stop" words such as 'the', 'and', and 'new' from its searches--and there is no way to get around this limitation. Update frequency: Weekly. An automated web roaming process samples the network continuously for more information to add, but the database is rebuilt once a week. Additional Information: Lycos offers a FAQ document for additional information about its service. Service runs on several Sun SparcStations to distribute the load, nonetheless is sometimes too busy to accept a search. For each document fetched, Lycos keeps the title, headings, subheadings, links, the 100 highest weighted words, and the first 20 lines. Plans include adding the standard Boolean operators (and, or and not) to search options. Created by: Carnegie Mellon University; Lycos, Inc.
Lycos Germany
Lycos Sweden
Magellan - The McKinley OnlineDatabase: Online guide to Internet that includes original editorial content, a directory of rated and reviewed Internet sites, a vast database of yet-to-be-reviewedsites, and a powerful search engine that helps you find what you're looking for. Contents: Its directory of 1,5 million sites includes 40,000 that are fully reviewed and rated on a four-star system. It functions as a kind of 'Michelin Guide' to the Internet. It includes Web sites, FTP and gopher servers, newsgroups, and Telnet sessions. Searching: When using the "+/-" options, be sure to leave a space between the first word and the symbol; do not leave a space between the "+/-" symbol and the second word. Results: Browse Magellan topics or perform a search and a list of sites that matches your area of interest will appear instantly.
Mamma [U] - Mother of All Search Engines.
Maple Square - A new classified list of Canadian sites.
MathSearch [K] - Searches a database of links to over 45,000 documents from mathematics and statistics servers across the Web.
Matt's Ultimate Search Page [M] - Search any of the best WWW catalogs on the net.
MESCH [K] - Multi-WAIS engine for searching commercial hosts. Searches a database of links to over 45,000 documents from mathematics and statistics servers across the Web.
MetaCrawler [U] - Excellent multi-threaded search engine that combines results from eight different services: Excite, Open Text, Lycos, Webcrawler, InfoSeek's trial database, Inktomi, Yahoo, and Galaxy. Results sets specify name, URL, the database in which the resource was found, and any annotations that could be found in the source database. Searching: Searches can be limited by region (world, continent, country or your domain), by type of site (any, company, educational, network, organization, government - only US, military, international), by time (the time you're willing to wait for results - from 1 to 10 minutes), by hits per engine (from 10 to all), and by the maximum number of total hits (form 10 to all). Upon receiving a query, the MetaCrawler posts the query to multiple search services in parallel, collates the returned references, and loads those references to verify their existence and to ensure that they contain relevant information. It has many useful features which other services either do not or are unable to provide. These include: (1) Automatic Verification: it can download references returned by other search services and ensure that those references are both accessible and contain valid data. This is activated by either phrase searching or by placing a + in front of a keyword (e.g. +Piere +Selberg). (2) Complete Coverage: Each search service tends to produce a fairly unique set of references. Using the MetaCrawler, you're able to see one page which contains all of the references from each service (so you won't miss anything). (3) Advanced Searching Syntax: it offers a powerful search syntax. It allows users to search for one or more phrases, all words, and any one word. It also has options to ensure that a particular word either appears or does not appear in anyof the results. This way, you can ensure that the results generated are indeed what you're looking for. Insert a "+" before a search term to signify that the term must exist in a document, or add a "-" to signify that it must not be present. Parentheses around a group of words indicate that the words should be searched as a cohesive phrase. You can specify multiple phrases in your search terms. (4) Service Vote Rankings: it combines the confidence scores given to each reference by the services that return it. Thus, when it returns a reference, it sums the scores given by each service and presents them in a 'voted' ordering. (5) Location Specification: In addition to query syntax, you can specify where you wish to search. Thus, if you know you want something in your own country, you can ensure that the results you get are infact from your own country! The only downside is that poorly constructed searches cantake minutes to return results. Created by: Erik Selberg and Oren Etzioni of the University of Washington.
Metasearch [M] - Search multiple enignes without re-typing.
MetaSearch at Highway 61 - A meta-search site that compiles the results of Yahoo, Alta Vista, Lycos, Infoseek, Open Text, Excite and Hotbot in one page.
MetaZoek [M] - A search engine that uses international search engines to look for information in the Netherlands. It claims to find more relevant information that other Dutch search engines.
Mojoe [K] - For multimedia lovers and power-users. If you're looking for sites with Film, Video, Java, Javascript, Shockwave (Director), Server Push, Client Pull, Gif89a or VRML, Sound, Chat, Database Connectivity.
Mooncow.com [U] - Queries the top search engines and returns a precise search result. The top 10-20 web sites are returned from each engine (Altavista, Hotbot, Excite, and Yahoo) after duplicates are removed, and the results are rated. Only the top results from each query are given.
Multinet - A New Zealand search engine.
Multiple Search [M] - A multi-threaded search engine with radio buttons.
Multi-Threaded Query Page [U] - Offers a multi-threaded query gateway. To perform a query, you enter the query text, select the search engine(s), and press the submit button. The queries run in parallel and will take as long as the slowest search engine selected. (Sun Microsystems)
MusicSearch [K] - Music search engine with over 5,000 links and growing.
Navigate dot Net [K] - A search engine that instantly submits the URL of your WEB in its directory for indexing. A great listing and search tool.
Nebula Search [K] - A Science-Fiction only search utility. Unique and fun to use.
Nerd World MEdia Internet Subject Index [B] - Another classiefied list of URL's.
The NetFerret - A Dutch search engine.
Net Locator - Frames based research tool with quick access to many search engines.
Net Navigator
New Riders' WWW Yellow Pages.
NLightN [U] - A metasearcher that also covers hundreds of databases, news-wire stories, reference materials. Registration required and some information must be paid for. Also a free front-end Net Locator, which is a frames-based all in one searching form.
NL-MENU - Alphabetical and geographical index of all WWW services in the Netherlands. The Dutch national entry-point.
Northern Light [B & K]
A new commercial site where you can download information from more than 3,400 journals, books, magazines, databases and newswires not available on any other search engine. It will cost you $1 per article.
OneKey [B] - Claims to be the largest database of kid sage sites. Some 40 editors do the work, and filter out all the sites that do not meet (American) Network TV Standards. They want to provide good, quality information for whatever interests you have.
On-line Books Page - An annotated index over 1,800 books whose full text is available on-line.
The Open Text Web Index [K] - Allows for a Simple Search or a Power Search. This robot searches the Web and at the same time indexes the full text of the pages it finds. It uses many computers together in a loosely-coupled parellelism. It allows free access to show-off the power of its software.
Otis Index, The [M]
Point
Reviews and separate ratings are presented for content, presentation and experience, using a scale of one to 50, for all sites in the collection (150.000 titles). The arrangement by 10 broad subject areas, with further subcategories, facilitates identification of the best Web resources by subject. Text, GIF en JPEG versions are available. Designed as a reviewing site so links under a category lead to individual reviews and then to the Web site, so not to be used as a high-speed browsing tool. (Point Communications Corporation)
Power Search [M] - A directory of 500+ search engines.
Prime Search - For Browsers with Java support. Allows searches of many engines.
Prototype WWW/SOLO server 1.0/1.0 [K] - A gateway to search several directories including X.500 Paradise.
RBSE's URL database [K] - Search WWW document full text.
Rex - The Internet Resource Exchange
SAPO, Servidor de Apontadores Portugueses [B} - A Purtguese directory.
SavvySearch [U] - A multi-threaded search engine that centralizes your query and sends it to other search engines to be searched simultaneously. It allows users to specify information categories, such as people, software, reports, reference. It offers relatively few additional configuration options. When set for verbose operation, SavvySearch tells you which search engine found a match and the result includes a hotlinked title, a URL, the file size, the relevance score, and the first few dozen words of the page.You can request anywhere from 10 to 50 results from each engine that you query. If you specify a large number of results, though, be prepared for a slow response. If you're prepared to wait about 45 seconds, you can select an "integrate results" option that eliminates duplicate responses. Savvy searches: Aliweb, Alta Vista, CSTR, DejaNews, Excite, EINET Galaxy, FTPSearch95, InfoSeek, Inktomi, Internet Movie Database, LookUP!, Lycos, Open Text, Pathfinder, Point Search, SIFT - Stanford Information Filtering Tool, Tribal Voice, Virtual Software Library, WebCrawler, Yahoo, Yellow Pages. SavvySearch uses your search terms, its own data about past searches and other factors to create a Search Plan. Up to 21 search engines are ranked and grouped according to their anticipated usefulness to your query. Its sophistication can't match that of MetaCrawler.
ScottYanoff's Internet Services List [B] - A top 5 per cent of the Web Award winner. One of the earliest subject arrangements to Internet resources, and with four years of links and still going strong; provides access to ftp and telnet sites, as well as WWW pages, and includes login and passwords where appropriate with some brief descriptions of some of the listed ftp sites.
Search.com [M] - All-in-one search launchpoint with 250 targets that find all kinds of information, from WWW sites to phone numbers, from movies to stock quotes, and all points between. From: c/net.
Search Engine Index [M] - Focuses on Australian search engines.
Search Engine Room [M]
Search Hytelnet - The Hytelnet database for resources accessible via telnet. The search is case insensitive, the booleans AND and OR are allowed. Created by: Rob Kabacoff, for Inter-Links.
Search The Net [M]- Descriptions, links and search entry forms for the major Internet search engines. From Demon Internet.
Search.NL [K] - A search engine from the Netherlands. Unique fuzzy searching eliminates the need for correct spelling of search queries.
Search Tools & General Listings [M]
Searching the Web [M] - A collection of references to searching servives, searching software, and to other related lists of information on searching (information retrieval). Edited by: Daniel LaLiberte.
SG-Scout - A non-searchable robot that provides a geographical listing of WWW servers all over the world. It has not been run since August 1994, so currency is out and accuracy is questionable.
SiteSeeker [B] - from Pathfinder. You can go directly to the Sociology section.
Snap - An entry point to the Internet and a hand-built directory of Web sites organized into topic areas. You can search the directory for the most relevant information on any subject, as well as create a personalized Web source tailored to your individual preferences. Snap.com offers stock quotes, market summaries, online shopping, local weather, sports scores, chat, state lottery results, horoscopes, classified ads, maps and driving directions, movie listings, business services, message boards and more.
SNARK - Enter your query only once, select the search engine and hit the Search button.
Snoopie [K] - Over 5 million files have been indexed for download at over 450 ftp sites World Wide. A search can be completed in 10 milliseconds. Free now, pay later?
Soproano Connections - General Resource Searcher.
Source of Searches [M] - A collection of search engines and directories. With text version and search forms.
The Spectre Server
The Spider's Apprentice - Offers help on searching the Web, they also analyze & rate the major search engines.
Starting Point
Stroud's - for Windows/Internet only [S] - The best of the applications for using the Internet with Windows 3.x/95/NT. This site is a partner with the Papa Winsock-L FTP Site (Indiana State University), a massive Winsock archive. The place to go for Internet applications to use on your Windows computer. Well organized and thorough reviews; very nice quick-read format and quick access to information you want.
Sunsite WAIS Interface - Simultaneous search of all public WAIS databases.
SuperSearch - Searches multiple sites at the same time.
Thesaurus Search
Tribal Voice

Use fuzzy logic (finds plurals, different tenses, etc.)

Find matches that contain
All Guide Words
At least one of the Guide Words
All Guide Words as a single string

Limit the number of matches to
TKM Education Search Engine
TUSP [M] - Search the best search engines from one page.
UC Berkeley SunsiteDigital Library
UKdirectory - Free, powerful, simple way to find any WWW site in Britain.
URL Minder - Free service; camps on a URL you submit and then e-mails you when it changes.
USE IT - A european metasearch service that allows for parallel search in more then 30 databases and search engines. That's nothing special, but this one works great. You can use the link above to select your own databases to search.

Max search time

International
European Italian
Business News
Computers
Verity Internet Virtual Library Search [K] - Searchable index of documents of interest to those using & developing the WWW and its related technologies.
W3 Search Engines - A collection of some of the most useful search engines available on the Web.
The Wandex - Search a robot gathered database for Web URLs.
WAIS directory-of-servers index - Wide Area Information Servers. You can choose a gateway or a direct access:

Gateway access

Direct access
Web Search Engines [M]
Web Voyager [M]
WEB.DE [B] - A German Internet Index.
WebCrawler [K]
Very fast keyword searcher. Size: 150,000 documents; 1,800,000 separate entries. The content index is about 50 MB. Content: Full text (excludes URL) - Web pages, FTP, Gopher, Newsgroups.Search software: WebCrawler Query Server, NEXTSTEPs Indexing Kit. It indexes both document titles and document content using a vector space model. Searching: Keywords, not strings or phrases. Default is boolean AND, can be switched off (boolean OR). Results: Ranked by relevancy, without annotations or summary. If the title doesn't tell you what you want to know, you have no choice but to link to the page. Update frequency: weekly. Accessibility/Response Time: Very fast. Pro's: Easy to use. Cons: Retrieval tools are not sophisticated enough. Search hints and other easily reachable background information is not detailed and clear enough. Its limited accuracy and the scant amount of information it returns make it a less than ideal resource. Doesn't display a text summary for each item found. Best used when you want to zero in on popular sites but not for complex searches. Created by: Brian Pinkerton, recently absorbed by America Online.

Find pages with of these words and return results.
Webcrawler.de [K] - German web-crawler. If you're looking for german-only Internet-documents, this is the place to look (access by a word-index).
WebDirect! [K] - Add, modify or delete websites, add or delete Yellow Page indexes, keywords, and display search results the way you want to.
Webhound WWW Interface [K] - A personalized WWW agent that recommends new sites to you based on what sites you have expressed a preference for in the past.
WebIndex - A Greek search engine.
Weborama {B] - A French inernet guide.
WebPlaces Internet Search Guide [M]
WebPort City Gateways [K]
Webscape's Netsearch Index [M]
WebStep Top 100 Free Listing [M] - A hyperlinked, annotated index of the best free search engine, database and yellow pages sites on the Internet.
Websurfer [K] - A 'surf engine' designed for browsing. Topical access to 50,000 Web pages. Access is achieved by selecting the first letter of the topic word, then the first and second letter combination of the topic word. Within these groupings, full word topics are listed that link to alpha list of the Web page names. The hierarchy is computer generated by alpha sorting keywords from the Web page name, city, country, and a site description. The hierarchy is also searchable. Commercial site, but no fee yet. From: World Access Internet Navigator.
World Email Directory - More than 12 million email addresses and more than 140 million business and phone addresses worldwide.
WWLib - Another directory to British Websites. This one uses the Dewey Decimal system.
WWW Home PagesBroker (harvest) [K] - It uses WAIS as an indexer/search subsystem.
WWWomen Search Directory [K]
A comprehensive search engine for women online. Organized in 16 main categories: arts & entertainment, working women, community & government, computers & Internet, education, feminism, health & safety, women in history, lesbians, books & magazines, women's resources, science & technology, shopping & fashion, and sports. The index is searchable:
WWW Virtual Library (from W3C - The WWW Consortium). [B]
A GNN Best of The Net nominee. A distributed subject catalogue that is built and maintained collaboratively. It is made up of more than 50 subject indexes that are located at sites distributed around theworld. It offers a Category Subtree, Library of Congress Classification, Top Ten Most Popular Fields , and Statistics. See also: CUI
WWWW - the World Wide WebWorm [K]
Database size: 3 million URLs. Contents: URL, URL references, title, hypertext links. Update frequency: varies. Accessibility/Response time: Fair. Searching: No Boolean operators, truncation. Results: Not ranked by relevancy, no annotations or summary. Cons: An early pioneer in the field of Web-searching tools, but now almost an anachronism. It's the least accurate of the search engines, often coming up empty-handed. Often outdated entries, with URLs for pages that had moved or no longer existed. Created by: Oliver McBryan, Computer Science Department, University of Colorado at Boulder History.
Yahoo [B]
Database: A hierarchical subject-oriented guide for the WWW and the Internet. It is the best known and most popular subject tree; the Net's largest subject index of WWW and Internet resources. Tens of thousands of Internet sites are listed within an easy-to-use, comprehensive subject hierarchy: 14 general subject headings and 50 sub-headings on the first page. Contents: Links (URLs) to Internet resources and brief descriptive text for those links. Searching: Power Search offers options for searching the resource title, the URL, or the descriptive text in any combination. Boolean operators (and, or) and string searching are also supported. Results: Links are returned along with their descriptive text, and the subject hierarchy under which it can be found in Yahoo is also displayed. The search term(s) in bold on the result screen. Sometimes links are out of date, but it is still one of the best places to start a search. Browsing can be facilitated by keyword searching the Yahoo hierarchy. Yahoo also features a What's New, and What's Cool service. Recently acquired by America Online. It's a virtual library that also functions as a Meta-search Navigator tying in Lycos, Alta Vista and WebCrawler, among others.
Yahoo! Japan [B]
Yahoo UK & Ireland
Yahoo Germany
Yahoo Canada
Yahoo France
Yahoo! Picture Gallery
You can visually browse through the images in some of Yahoo's most popular categories.
Yellow Pages Online
Zamboni's Search Engine Links [M]
ZD Net Software Library [S]
A collection of shareware and packages divided by category, including games, Internet, education, programs and utilities, Windows '95, and editor's picks. A useful site to find some of the best software and reviews. Reviews give you a quick way to judge the value of something without having to download and install it. They are all virus checked. Not as many files as other sites, but there are over 10,000.
ZenSearch [K]
Indexes only quality sites.
ZZZ Search [K] - Search in Estonian.

Mega Lists of Search Tools

Master List of Search Engines at Yahoo.
Find a Search - search.com - C|Net Service. Looking for a search engine to get you started? Enter what you are looking for in the box below and click the search button. If you're looking for information on a specific issue, you will the best search tools for finding information about this issue.
Search Engine Collection - Netscape pulls all the good search sites together.
Search Engines -All - Bob Allison's page on All the Internet search engines.
W3 Search Engines - Another Master List of Search Engines. University of Waterloo.
Wegwijzers - A Dutch collection of search engines from SurfNet.

Editor: Albert Benschop
Sociology Department
University of Amsterdam