Public Internet Search Tools

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Public Internet Search Tools

See our Internet Help Page for how to find and evaluate information on the net.
See our Databases page for research resources not available on the public web.

We particularly recommend search tools appearing in a bold typeface.
Click on an infomark to learn about each category or search tool.
Indicates sites geared towards academic information.
Site does not allow pass-through search. Visit site to use its search engine.

SEARCH ENGINES are a good all-purpose starting place for finding information on the public web. At their core are huge databases (billions of items) that are automatically created by "robots", "crawlers", or �spiders� that continually search the Internet for new and updated pages. Searches engine results generally come as a long un-clustered list sorted according to �relevance.� When evaluating the quality of a search engine consider: relevance ranking quality, ease of use, speed, whether or not advertisements are mixed in with search results, and the availability of advanced search features (phrase searching, truncation, field limits, Boolean operators, sort options, etc.). The comparison chart from InfoPeople, is a useful guide. The market leaders are Google , Yahoo!, MSN and Ask . Exalead is worth a look due to its unusual reach set of advanced search features (e.g. truncation and proximity searching). Try Snap for it's site preview and other interface features. (AlltheWeb and AltaVista are now owned by Yahoo! and use the same underlying data.)

SUBJECT DIRECTORIES include web sites hand-selected by people, not robots. Human beings also add value by assigning a category or subject heading to every web site included in the database. This human touch helps filter out some of the junk and can lead to better searchability. The downside is that the databases are MUCH smaller. Selective directories like INFOMINE and the Librarians' Internet Index are very careful about what deserves to be included, so they may have only 10 or 20 thousand records, whereas Yahoo! Directory or the Open Directory Project have several million. Use a directory when you want pre-screened results, or when you are having trouble choosing vocabulary to successfully focus your search.

MULTISEARCH TOOLS have no database of their own, so they go get results from Yahoo!, MSN , Ask and others. Often they combine these results and present them in one integrated list. Use these tools for very obscure topics or anytime you want to try multiple search engines without the trouble of multiple searches.

Another reason for trying these tools are their special interface features. Clusty and Vivisimo help you refine your search by clustering together pages that share certain concepts or keywords. KartOO does the same thing, but uses visual diagrams to display the clusters. SurfWax offers a large set of interesting tools to help you focus and analyze search results.

When evaluating multisearch tools consider how you like the unique interface features and take note of which tools are included (and are not included) in the results. Dogpile is the only one listed here that offers all four top search engines, but BEWARE: it mixes "sponsored" advertisements in with the search results.

SPECIALTY SEARCHES focus on a particular need or type of information. If these tools match your need, they will serve you better than a general web searching tool.

Google Scholar and WinLive Academic can help you find academic literature, but you may get better results using the library's research databases. MIT Start is designed to answer factual questions like "How high is Mount Everest?", or "What is a blue moon?" Ask , Yahoo , and others also sometimes offer direct answers to questions, but it depends on the search. Alexa.com offers information about websites like who owns the site and how long it has been around. You'll also see site traffic rankings, user reviews, lists of other sites visited by the same people, and other features emblematic of Amazon.com (Alexa's parent company). The WaybackMachine offers archived historical versions of web sites. This is really useful for returning to web sites that have disappeared or changed since you last visited.

To find more specialized databases try searching INFOMINE or another database of your choice using a search like "toxic chemicals database". See also Berkeley's "Invisible Web" page and "Specialty Search Engines" from Search Engine Watch. Many specialty search tools are not freely available on the public web, but are available to you on the library's Databases pages.

COMBINATIONS of several tools are offered by many vendors. For example Yahoo!, and Google both offer a crawler-based search engine, a human-generated directory, and several specialty searches (images, news, etc.) If you begin your search in the main web-search page, the interfaces sometimes highlight specialized results at the top or offer category names in the results lists. Very often these multiple kinds of information don't all come from the same source. For example, the Google Directory is essentially a repackaged version of the Open Directory Project . More information on who gets data from whom is available from Search Engine Watch.

For further information describing and comparing the features, strengths, and weaknesses of various search tools, see Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Showdown, and the InfoPeople Search Tools pages. Combined with personal experience and recommendations from colleagues, these resources were the primary tools used to compile this page.

Page last edited on 07/08/2008.
Reviewed by John Dobbins on 6/25/2004.

We welcome your Comments and Suggestions.

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